The Dark Ages
by PSan
Summary: The story of the Uesugi clan and Tohma Seguchi after the incidents of New York. A journey through the life experiences and bonds created that shaped the characters we came to know and love at the beginning of Gravitation. Chapter 4 up
1. A Bleak End to Spring

_Summary: The story of the __Uesegi__ clan and Tohma Seguchi after the incidents of New York. A journey through the life experiences and bonds created that shaped the characters we came to know and love at the beginning of Gravitation. __Prologue and Ch1 UP._

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravitation or the characters portrayed within it. They belong to the wonderful Maki Murakami and I'm only using her ideas and a bit of my own artistic license to write a story.

_Author's Notes_

For those following **War of Hearts**:

I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long. I haven't quit writing it at all, but I've been writing some short NC-17 rated Gravi (_see my profile for more info_). I've started re-writing War of Hearts because I'm unhappy with it since I think my writing style has changed a lot since I started writing. Right now, I'm consumed by this plot bunny, so I can't say how long it will be until I start re-posting War of Hearts again, but I have not given up on it, so, don't give up on me, either. I hope you find it in your hearts to forgive me, but please don't hassle me about that story.

For a long time now, I have had the idea of a long series fic dealing with the New York events and its consequences for all those involved in it. This summer I finally got around starting to write it. I have done quite a lot of research for it, but if some events and places seem wrong, I apologize before hand and would appreciate any input/corrections the readers are willing to give me. This is set to be a long series fic. I can't exactly say how long it will be, but I'm guessing between ten and twenty chapters. The fic starts in New York and travels back and forth between the past and the present as well as doing slight jumps forward in time. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I am enjoying writing it.

It starts off quite dramatically, but I promise it won't all be pain and tears.

_Acknowledgements_

This fic is dedicated to all the members of the _GraviMuseMeet_. I wouldn't have gotten out of my writing slump if it hadn't been for the long, inspiring discussions with its members there, as well as their ever-present encouragement and belief in my ideas. I couldn't possibly name them all, but to this regard a heart-felt thanks goes to the following people (in no particular order):

**Bakayaroonna, ****Angrybee****Teletha****ColonelSho****Daiyaonna****Aira**, and - above all - my beta, **Aja**. Without her constant and honest, not to mention prompt, advice and suggestions, this fic wouldn't be what it is now, and I would have long ago lost heart in my own writing.

Thank you everybody.

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**The Dark Ages **

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**Prologue**

_In the misty air of a new day, dew condenses on blooming flowers. When the snow melted, it became Spring._

**A BLEAK END TO SPRING**

The man had been running far longer than a body like his could take; nonetheless, his pace didn't waver for a second. His feet pushed decisively against the concrete below, propelling him forward. He was experiencing raw panic; anxiety and fear dwelled within him, squeezing his chest, clouding his mind. The levels of adrenaline rose in his veins, powering him further. A strong breeze blew from the east, rustling his hair, making it occasionally slap his face and get in his left eye. He ran up the rusty metal staircase on the side of the building. Under his weight, the bolted-in screws biting into the wall squeaked loudly, disturbing the silence reigning over the barren neighborhood. A flock of pigeons took to the air with a loud batting of crashing wings, casting a long, moving shadow over the man's running form.

He got to the level where he figured he had heard screams a few seconds earlier. He tried to kick an old door open and the thin panel of wood gave way easily under the force of his foot, trapping his leg momentarily until he forcefully pulled it out, hurting himself in the process. The lock stubbornly held onto the door frame, however, and the door remained locked, blocking his path. He was heaving; strands of straw blonde hair clung to his narrow face with sleek sweat. The overpowering feeling of helplessness and despair in his chest went up another notch, and his heart pounded even louder in his throat. Desperate situations called for desperate measures: he punched through the already-cracked window that made up the upper half of the door, shattering the glass and reaching inside to finally let himself in. The darkness in the corridor was a sharp contrast with the orange blaze of sunset lighting up the skies of the dying day outside.

Just then, he heard the shot that would change his and many people's lives forever. It was a loud bang, like exploding fireworks, deafening and bloodcurdling. Everything froze for an instant – the image of the empty corridor, the blood in his veins, his heart beat. All colour drained from his face as he sucked the air into his lungs sharply. His sweat also turned cold, sending a sharp jolt down his spine, making him go weak in the knees as his whole head suddenly spun with fear. The echoing sound of the shot seemed to go on forever, reverberating, as it bounced from wall to wall in the narrow, carpeted corridor, making its way into the streets where he'd spent his breath and up to the sky to fly away with the pigeons. The next few moments passed in a blur - finding the room, catching a glance of the gun dropping from the boy's shaking hands, taking in the scene of the crime, gathering the youth in his arms.

"Thank god you are alive. Thank god you are alive," he repeated over and over again like a mantra, as he rocked them back and forth.

Yuki Kitazawa lay on the floor face down, a few paces away from where the man and the boy kneeled. He was dead. Dark blood was pooling around him quickly, seeping out from the firearm wound in his chest and creeping towards them, like a black tide rising with the pull of the moon. The strong smell of gunpowder mingled with the faint smell of red wine that hung in the air, combining in a sickening cloud of odours that made their heads spin faster.

The boy shook and sobbed loudly, digging his fingernails in the arms of the man holding him, wetting his shoulder with spit and tears. His clothes were in disarray and the slacks he'd been wearing pooled around his feet in a tangled mess. One leg was still inside the slacks leg whilst the other was bear to the foot, having lost both his socks and trainers at some point during his struggle 1. The man pressed his chin to the teenager's head, wrapping his arms more tightly around him in a vain attempt to bring him out of his state of shock, and at the same time asserting the fact they were both still breathing. He was relieved to find the boy alive, but other alarm bells soon started ringing in his head.

"You are not to be blamed," he rushed to say. "I'm so sorry. It is all my fault."

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**Chapter One**

**STAND BY ME**

Tohma stretched his arm to flick off the light above him and to turn down the air-conditioning. Opening the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him, he put away the book he'd been reading. The seatbelt lights were off, but he preferred to keep his on while he was seated, only taking it off when ultimately necessary. He absolutely loathed flying. This was because Seguchi Tohma was a control freak, and the mere thought of leaving his life in the hands of tired pilots and an overworked cabin crew made his skin crawl with trepidation. If he'd had the opportunity to learn how to fly a plane, he would have taken it. This was also the reason he didn't have a chauffer, and never – ever – rode public transport. His public transport phobia was one of Tohma's secrets, of which he had very many, not all as harmless. He was a man who had to be in control of _every_ situation, calculating the possible outcomes and pitfalls of events _every_ step of the way. All of that had been tossed aside in the last day, however. The reins he'd been gripping tightly had snapped, and the carriage he'd been riding was plunging ahead, out of control. There now were new dark secrets to be added to his already too expanse collection. Tohma shivered.

His eyes roamed wearily back in the direction of the toilet. He'd been keeping watch of the queue for the toilets for the last twenty minutes. After a rather overweight foreign man, a lady with three little kids, and an elderly woman had gone in, it seemed to – finally – be vacant. Almost everyone around him was either asleep or reading, leaving only a handful of people actually paying attention to the movie showing on screen. Getting out of his aisle seat, he stood up in the narrow corridor, feeling the vibrations of the plane shake him from feet to head, dizzying him slightly. He took a deep breath and opened up the overhead compartment, taking out a black briefcase. Before closing the compartment once more and heading for the toilet, briefcase in hand, he cast a glance at young Eiri, who was curled up in the window seat, asleep. Tohma allowed himself a moment to find a smidgeon of happiness in the chaos they've been thrown into. Eiri was still alive, and that made up for anything fate might throw their way, even if things were far from okay. Tohma pulled the boy's blanket further up over his left shoulder and left.

When he locked the door, the lights came on automatically and he settled the briefcase on top of the toilet seat, which had the lid down. The buckles made a 'clack' sound as they were clicked open and Tohma got a small brown toiletry bag from the top compartment. He opened it and found a small bottle of soap. Squirting some of it onto his hands, he proceeded to wash them and his forearms, all the way to the elbow and a little beyond. The soap smelled refreshing and its scent was soothing. The label read _lavender_. He took a nail brush from the brown Louis Vuitton bag and used it to clean his fingernails carefully, one by one. This was the third time he'd washed them on the plane, the fifth that day counting the two times he'd used the toilets in the airport terminal, and the sixth counting the time he'd washed them in the shower before packing the bags. Yet, it seemed he still couldn't shake the dirty feeling away, couldn't wash it off, couldn't stop it from crawling all over his skin.

"Dammit," he muttered to the tiny, empty cubicle. His whisper was lost in the background noise produced by the plane engines. He knew he was hurting himself, but he couldn't help it. He felt dirty. His usually manicured nails were chapped and the back of his hands had gone red from scrubbing it too hard. The cuts in his right knuckles were bleeding again. He watched mesmerized as a few blood droplets dripped from his hand and fell into the metal sink; deep crimson against silver. It looked much different than the blood that had stained his clothes, his hands and his fingernails a little over twenty four hours ago. This was redder and had a different consistency, he thought, compared to the blood coming out of a living being's death wound. Or perhaps it looked like that because it wasn't washed in the moonlight or mixed with dirt. Maybe his mind was registering the world around him differently now, as if in a dream where the edges of things appeared sharper and more colorful – more defined. Or, perhaps, he had just woken up, and it had been his dream that'd been foggy. He couldn't tell which and, quite frankly, finding out was at the bottom of his priorities at the moment. He briefly thought about the glass cuts in his right hand, and how he hadn't even noticed getting them at the time he'd injured himself, when he'd punched through the window.

The water washed his wounds clean, turning pink before reaching the sink and disappearing down the drain. He wondered if the water would be discarded out of the plane and, if so, if it would freeze in the cold temperatures outside, as it fell from the skies. Twenty thousand feet, the pilot had said – that's how far up they were. And that's how far down they'd plummet if the plane crashed. Twenty whole thousand feet between them and the Earth below. In a twisted way, however, it was somehow safer than being on the ground right now; up there on No Man's Land, criminal laws were loose, cutting them some slack. At the very least they were safe until they touched the ground.

He washed his face and the back of his neck, leaving the water on his skin to prolong the sense of cleanliness. He patted his hands dry with tissue paper, and waited for the cuts to stop bleeding, peeling off the tiny bits of tissue that stuck to his skin afterward. He shaved, combed his blonde hair and changed his white shirt, placing the old one in the plastic laundry bag where he'd got the new one from, and tucking it away in the bottom compartment of the briefcase.

For a long moment, he watched his reflection in the small, rectangular mirror, resting his hands on either side of the sink; a weak yellow light shone above him. The man staring back at him was a stranger with a weary expression and sunken blue-green eyes that had lost their sparkle. There were purple bags under his eyes and the rest of his face looked pale and lifeless under the artificial lighting, adding ten years to his current age of twenty-six. His lips were dry and cracked, and stretched in a mocking thin line he couldn't recognize as his own. His shoulders shook for a moment in a shiver as he broke eye contact with the man in the mirror. He fixed his eyes back on the sink instead, but it was only to find that his reflection there was a morphed shadow even scarier than the image in the mirror. He snapped his head up to the ceiling, trying not to let the agitation in his gut get to him. He was cool. Everything was under control, he lied to himself. He wrapped some bandages around his right hand hastily, for he was now desperate to get back to the relative safety of his seat. He packed everything away and left the toilet for what would be the last time that flight.

"You are awake." Tohma's voice came out steady in a whisper as he put the briefcase away, back on the overhead compartment. He sat himself down and buckled his seatbelt on. The boy didn't answer him back. He simply looked out of the window and unconsciously wrapped himself tighter in the blanket.

"It's all right. You don't have to say anything. Just nod 'yes' or 'no', okay?" Tohma's hands started sweating again. He wiped them on his blue jeans and blinked. "Are you feeling well?" he asked worriedly. Eiri sat still, facing away from him, looking at the dark nothingness outside the window, unmoving.

"Okay. Let's try something else. Are you hungry?" he tried once more, patiently. But once more he received no reply. "You should eat even if you aren't hungry. The dizziness and the headache won't go away for a while yet and you need to eat to keep strong. You haven't had a bite for over a day." At that moment the boy turned around. His gaze was directed downwards, successfully hiding his eyes behind a curtain of blond hair. Tohma raised his right hand, but stopped it in midair, somehow hesitant of touching Eiri. He didn't know whether to comfort the boy or give him his own space. All thoughts of flying, planes crashing, and criminal laws were now forgotten, and his concentration and worries were fixed solely on Eiri.

"I know it's hard." Tohma swallowed, lowering his hand to his lap. "In case you are wondering, you are under the effects of Valium. After we arrive back at home you don't have to take them anymore if you don't want to," Tohma explained to Eiri carefully, even though he hadn't asked him anything. He hadn't expected the teenager to be very talkative, and the mood was as fragile and awkward as he'd predicted.

"One of the good things about traveling in first class is that we don't have to wait to be served food, and if we miss our turn we can order again," Tohma changed topic, to one he hoped might distract the boy from thinking too much. He caught the attention of the polite and ever-smiling stewardess and asked her to bring some food - preferably some of the fish if they still had any left. He also asked her for some tea for both Eiri and himself. The boy was currently busying himself by curling a blue thread of the blanket around his index finger until his digit turned yellow from the pressure, at which point he released the thread, watched his finger go pink once more, and started the cycle all over again. Tohma watched him in silence for a little while. When the food and tea arrived Tohma thanked the stewardess and opened Eiri's table, swapping the tray of fish from his table to the other, but leaving both cups of tea on his own.

"Eat," he commanded softly. "It's pretty good," he added. "I had the same," he said, knowing fully well that he hadn't been able to stomach a quarter of the food himself. Eiri kept toying with the blanket, and Tohma inched the tray closer to him and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Please?" His voice came out barely audible and Eiri lifted his eyes a little for the first time in the last ten minutes. "For me?" Tohma asked, searching for the boy's gaze with his own. Something akin to hope laced his plea. Then, Eiri saw the bandages on Tohma's right hand and his expression changed immediately. Amber sad eyes met those of Tohma for a brief second, and then turned to contemplate the tray of food, almost as if it were some sort of menace to him.

"It's nothing. Please don't worry about it," Tohma said, referring to his right hand, and he tucked it away under his thigh. Eiri picked up the chopsticks. He used them to cut a little piece of fish and to put it in his mouth. He chewed it slowly.

"Thank you," Tohma said. "Thank you," he repeated. Whether he was thanking Eiri or the Buddha he'd been praying to wasn't clear, however. Eiri swallowed the fish with obvious effort and then cut off another piece, even smaller, if that was physically possible, than the one before. He put it in his mouth, but his jaw didn't move at all this time. His chin quavered a little; a tear rolled down his cheek and was soon followed by another, and then another, until he was crying silently. Eiri hiccupped and swallowed, choking slightly on the food in his mouth. He wiped the tears away with the back of his left hand and turned his head away towards the window. Tohma produced a handkerchief out of his jeans' pocket and handed it to him, not quite knowing what to do or say. Tohma took the tray of food away and gave it to a different stewardess, a shorter one who wore glasses. It was suddenly obvious to him Eiri was seeking comfort, not solitude.

"Shh, it's okay. Let it all out, it's okay to cry. Don't hold it back. Grown ups cry as well. It makes us cope better. It's nothing to be ashamed of," Tohma said reassuringly. He combed the teenager's hair back with his fingers and moved him so that Eiri's head lied on his shoulder, and nobody else could see him cry. Tohma thought that, even in a situation like this, it was important for Eiri he wasn't seen as weak. He knew how hard the teenager worked to appear mature and independent. To a certain extent he really was; but, despite his usually mature demeanor, the fact he was barely sixteen remained a painful truth. He squeezed Eiri's shoulder and put his mouth to the other's hair, spreading warmth with his breath on the other's scalp.

"Now you listen to me carefully, Eiri," he started whispering against the teenager's head, "What happened was not your fault, do you hear me?" He shook the teenager for emphasis and continued. "It was in self defense. It couldn't have been helped, all right? If you need to blame anyone, then blame me. Blame me for not seeing his true self, blame me for having hired him as your tutor, blame me for trusting him, but never – ever – blame yourself for what you were forced to do." Tohma swallowed hard and noticed they'd accidentally caught the attention of the stewardess to whom he'd handed the tray of food, and she was now walking back towards them with a concerned expression on her little face, although she tried not to let it show. The skin between her eyebrows furrowed a little, but when she was only a few seats away Tohma reassured her with a little nod, and dismissed her with a wave of his hand. He lowered his tone further. "It wasn't your fault, Eiri-kun. I want you to promise me you understand that, okay? Promise, mmh? Just shake your head 'yes' for me, please. _Please_." Eiri nodded reluctantly and the weight Tohma seemed to bear on his shoulders decreased a little. "Thank you, Eiri-kun," he added, before placing a light kiss on Eiri's head.

"I know you don't think you can, but try to forget what happened. Think of it as a bad dream, as a terrible story that happened to someone else, in a place far away. We'll be home soon and then everything will go back to normal. I promise."

Eiri shifted in his seat, making enough room for himself to lie down on Tohma's lap, taking advantage of the ample leg room in first class. His silent tears were warm and soaked Tohma's jeans, but Tohma didn't mind it. The tea lay on his table, forgotten, slowly evaporating, and losing its heat.

"Don't worry about anything, okay? Everything was taken care of. No one will ever know. Ever."

Between the warmth of the blanket, Tohma's fingers entwined in his hair, and the low humming of the aircraft's engines, Eiri was lulled to sleep once more. Tohma didn't sleep at all, but his restlessness subsided somewhat by holding Eiri close to himself.

Several long hours passed, flying over the vast Pacific Ocean, towards a new day, before the seatbelt lights came back on and Captain Samuel Harris announced their descent into Narita Airport, Japan - their homeland. Upon leaving the plane, the stewardess in the glasses smiled softly at Eiri and waved the pair of them goodbye as they left the large Boeing 777 behind and set foot on Japanese soil. Eiri's lips twitched a little, in what may have been an attempt at a smile, but it came out wrong, and Tohma smiled at her in his place.

It was a little before midnight, so the airport was rather quiet. Tohma wanted to hold Eiri's hand reassuringly, but such open gestures of affection in public were frowned upon in Japan, so he contented himself with placing a hand on the teenager's lower back every now and then, pushing him forward to meet Tohma's longer strides.

"I only packed the essentials. The rest of our stuff will be brought over within the next month." They stepped onto the escalator taking them down to the luggage collection area, and Tohma continued his explanation. "Everything was taken care of while you slept," he said, and Eiri looked up at him, looking as surprised as he could show through the myriad of emotions flicking in his eyes. There were only a few centimeters difference in their heights – Tohma being taller – and Tohma's hand lingered on his back, warming him up.

After the incident in the building Tohma had carried the sixteen year old in his arms back down the rusty staircase, where he thought they might not be seen by any neighbors. He'd lost track of how long he had spent inside, worrying over the possibility someone had called the police after hearing the gunshot, but unable to part with the boy all the same. After finding Eiri's socks and trainers Tohma had dressed him quickly, as gently as he could.

The first stars were visible in the sky and the wind had changed course, now blowing more gently from the north. To his surprise no police sirens rung in the air. He had settled Eiri down on the sidewalk and asked him to wait. The boy had clung to him, and tearing the youth's arms from his shirt had broken Tohma's heart. "I'm so very sorry, Eiri. I'll come back very soon. I promise. Please forgive me," he'd said, before forcing himself to turn around and leave. He'd walked around the corner and run to the nearest road where traffic could be heard. Not long after getting there he had hailed a yellow New York cab and made it his own. He had given the driver all the money he carried in his wallet, which was a hefty sum, and his diamond-encrusted Rolex. The driver had looked reluctant, but had accepted Tohma's offer in the end. The cabbie would probably claim the car had been stolen, collect the insurance money and keep what the stranger had given him, which was not that bad a deal.

Tohma hadn't wanted anyone to see Eiri and him together. He had wanted to avoid witnesses that might remember them. Considering the state Eiri had been in, catching people's attention was more than likely. Tohma's own clothes were stained a little, too, but to a much lesser degree, and in the dark, people might miss it. Just getting the taxi had been a huge risk, and yet his mind hadn't been able to focus on anything other than the youth waiting for him, in the ever growing darkness, crushed and alone. He'd quickly driven the car as close to Eiri as he could get, given the traffic direction of the surrounding streets and he'd run the rest of the way to where he'd left the boy, cursing under his breath. Tohma had found him there, just as he'd left him, propped against the orange bricks of the building, eyes glazed and unfocused. Tohma calculated that the whole thing couldn't have taken much longer than fifteen-twenty minutes. Tohma had apologized profusely and given Eiri kind words, but judging by the expression in the other's face, his words had been lost on empty ears. The boy was obviously experiencing what people referred to loosely as shock. He could tell because he could see Eiri's ramification of veins under the skin on his face, which had grown very pale. If he didn't show any signs of improvement soon, Tohma would have to seek medical assistance.

After carrying him to the car, and as if fate had suddenly sided with them, Eiri's color seemed to slowly return to his cheeks. While Eiri sat on the car, Tohma had stepped outside and walked into a pharmacy; purchased a First Aid kit, Dalmane, Valium, vitamin C, surgical gloves, and a few toiletries. It had taken some persuasion to convince the pharmacist he wasn't going to use both the strong sleeping pills and the Valium at the same time, and that he was aware that the effects of such a concoction could be lethal.

Back in the car's glove compartment, Tohma had found an old bottle of Pepsi, about a quarter full, and obviously flat. He'd fed a limp Eiri the Dalmane and a large dosage of vitamin C, which he knew helped shock-stricken patients. Then he had driven them out of the borough of Queens, to a three star hotel about forty five minute's drive away, in the borough of Brooklyn. It had been the longest, most tension-filled, forty five minutes of Tohma's life, second only to the time prior to finding Eiri at Kitazawa's flat earlier that evening. His eyes had kept straying from the road to the boy sitting next to him, who had by then fallen into a deep slumber. Tohma had kept taking the boy's wrist in his hand in intervals of a few minutes, and checking to make sure his pulse remained stable.

Once they were inside the hotel bedroom, Tohma had removed Eiri's blood stained clothes while the boy slept. His hands had shaken and his eyes gotten blurry as he'd bathed Eiri and put him to bed. Seeing the youth naked had finally confirmed Tohma's suspicions that the boy had been assaulted physically, and Tohma had been sick in the toilet until he'd emptied all the contents in his stomach, at which point he'd vomited bile. After recuperating he'd paced up and down the room, deep in thought as the minutes ticked on in a clock on the wall. At about midnight, he'd driven the inconspicuous cab back to the place where all hopes of a normal life had shattered a few hours ago when Eiri had taken Yuki's life away. He'd visited a couple of ATMs along the way and withdrawn a few thousand dollars from his bank account. It hadn't been difficult to carry out his plan in the area where he'd been.

Tohma had easily found and paid a low-life, drug-addicted prostitute to direct him to her dealer, from whom he'd bought a considerable amount of cocaine; enough to sustain a serious addict for about a week, maybe. After removing any implicating evidence from the scene of the crime using the surgical gloves he'd bought, and after planting the cocaine in Yuki Kitazawa's flat, he'd met the hooker again. He'd paid her more cash to make an anonymous phone call to the police from a payphone, relating a fight between a local gang in the area, and the subsequent sound of gunshots at the building compound. He was hoping the police paid it enough attention to find the body and the cocaine, but avoid digging any further on account of the many other gang related investigations that occupied the police in the borough of Queens. Luckily, Yuki Kitazawa had no relatives in America and, hopefully, few friends.

Tohma had taken all the evidence with him, which included the clothes Eiri had worn that day and the gun, amongst other items. He'd then driven to South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, in Upper New York Bay, only stopping once at a petrol station to refill the tank and to buy a small can of gasoline. He'd found a quiet spot in the port, away from the cargo ships that were loaded at night, taking care not to be seen by any night staff. He'd been methodical and efficient when setting about destroying any connections between them and Yuki Kitazawa. Like a robot on autopilot, he'd de-attached himself from emotions and followed what he'd determined was the logical path of action, methodically and purposefully carrying out his plans. Tohma, as always, had been in control.

An empty cylindrical metal barrel had served Tohma to throw Eiri's clothes and set them on fire, along with the license plates of the taxi, all doused in gasoline. He'd put out the fire in the barrel after a while, picked up the carbonized items from it, now soggy with sea water, and locked the wet ashes and metal burnt to a crisp in the trunk of the car. The last step of his plan consisted of dumping the car in the East River, in a spot where the current was particularly strong, in hopes it would be washed away and never found. The image of the back of the plate-less yellow cab disappearing into dark waters, disturbing the surface with a final swirl and audible gulp as it dragged the sea water down with its weight, would forever be engraved in Tohma's memory. Would it sink all the way to the bottom? Would that really be the last time a human being saw that car? Would it really disappear for good? Was everything really that easy? Tohma hoped with all his will that it was.

With those thoughts in mind Tohma had then walked out of the port, amongst metal crates deposited closely together and back along the narrow streets that had taken him there, in the crisp chill of the awakening day. He found the streets once more coming to life with commuters leaving their homes and boarding the subway, the buses, or one of many thousands of New York yellow cabs like the one he'd just caused to vanish. He was in a city of strangers, being a strange face amongst the crowd, himself; an ordinary man in dirty clothes with no coat. He was a foreigner in a city of foreigners, riding the bus. The fact he was riding public transport for the first time in many years didn't even cross his mind.

His calm and collected side had taken over him once more, and he'd ridden over Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan bound, watching the violet haze of twilight slowly turn pink, then orange, and then cloudless blue. It was the sunrise of the twenty-first of June: the Summer Solstice. Today, the sun would be at its point furthest north and cross the Tropic of Cancer. Today was to be the longest day of the year; and yet, he felt as though somebody had gotten it all wrong, had miscalculated the coordinates of the celestial bodies that year. Not only had last night been the last day of spring, but the worst and longest day of his whole life. He witnessed the birth of summer, not finding in him to feel the gloriousness of the event. Tohma's mind had been somewhere else. He had been thinking how ironic it was that last night had also marked the end of Eiri's springtime, the end of his innocence, and he'd wondered bitterly if the gods were mocking him with that beautiful display of flames in the sky, as if showing off their cosmic power. The tall and worldwide-famous skyline of Manhattan rose ahead of him, in a field of skyscrapers, which included the incredibly tall Twin Towers and the Empire State Building. To the left of him, and through the suspending cables of the bridge, he could see Manhattan Bridge; below him, the East River waters followed their course. Life, it seemed, went on regardless.

His destination had been River Place, on 42nd Street, the luxurious flat Eiri and he had shared during the months spent in New York. He'd collected a few things which were enough to fill up a medium size suitcase and had gotten changed, throwing his clothes in a black rubbish bag and putting it in the suitcase. He'd then gotten a cab back to Brooklyn, this time paying for his journey and getting off fifteen minutes' walk away from the three-star hotel. He'd disposed of the black bag, a few streets away from the hotel, and purchased the morning paper, finding no news of gang rioting or the finding of the body of a Japanese tutor. Once he was back in the bedroom, he'd checked up on Eiri, who appeared to have slept throughout the whole ordeal, thanks to the Dalmane. Whether Eiri had had a peaceful sleep or not, Tohma couldn't tell, but he hoped it'd been void of nightmares at least.

Tohma's body and mind had been running on the adrenaline produced by his body, and the fact he was still deeply restless and concerned had kept his mind sharply in focus. He'd sat down next to the boy and caressed his face, feeling funny when the boy's breath tickled his index finger. All he could think about was how he had failed Eiri, how he hadn't been able to protect him. He'd bent down and kissed Eiri's cheek softly, trying to show him, even if Eiri wasn't conscious to feel it, how much he cared about him. "I'm so sorry, Eiri-kun," he'd whispered against the boy's warm skin. "So very sorry. You have no idea." Tohma had wrapped his arms around Eiri and stayed in their embrace for a few precious minutes. It was during those few minutes that Seguchi Tohma had made a promise to himself, one he intended to carry to the grave without fail: he would protect Eiri from further harm for the rest of his life, at all costs; doing whatever was required to ensure this purpose – he would put Eiri's happiness above his own and anyone else's, even if it meant he might hurt other people, or himself, in the process.

As the hot water of the hotel's shower pelted down on his shoulders, the rest of Tohma's plan had come into focus. He'd settled the bill at the hotel, with cash, and helped a drowsy Eiri into yet another cab. This one drove them to John F. Kennedy International Airport. He'd managed to buy two business class tickets aboard the next flight to Japan, paying with his credit card. A small dosage of Valium pills and eight anxious hours later, Eiri and he had boarded a United Airlines plane, and left The Big Apple for good. Relief had washed over Tohma as the buildings that made up New York City became nothing but glowing yellow dots on a distant black horizon.

"Nobody knows we are here, yet," he whispered to Eiri as he steered the boy in the direction of conveyor belt number seventeen. A man wearing a uniform pushed a line of nested trolleys along, in the opposite direction, their wheels cluttering over the large, marble tiles of the floor. Not much activity was displayed in the information screens, as life at Narita Airport seemed to have slowed down to a crawl.

"You might remember Ryuichi-san, Nittle Grasper's vocalist. He's currently on holiday in Australia. I have the keys to his flat, here in Tokyo. We'll spend the night there and have a nice, long talk in the morning over breakfast, okay?"

Eiri nodded and Tohma patted him on the back. "I'm proud of you, Eiri-kun," he said. "You've been very brave."

_To be continued_

* * *

In the next chapter, we get a glance into Tohma and Eiri's life back in New York, as well as some brief knowledge of their lives just before it. We learn a bit more about Kitazawa and his relationship with Eiri, but all is not revealed yet. Stay tuned. 

For some pictures, copy and paste the following links:

1 Eiri and Tohma in manga panel, from volume 8:

w w w(dot)patosan(dot)co(dot)uk/patimages/V8Trauma(dot)jpg

Upper New York Bay:

w w w (dot)patosan(dot)co(dot)uk/patimages/UpperNYBay(dot)JPG

Manhattan Skyline and Brooklyn Bridge:

w w w(dot)patosan(dot)co(dot)uk/patimages/BrookBridge(dot)jpg

Reviews and constructive criticism are always more than welcome.


	2. Of Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravitation or the characters portrayed within it. They belong to the wonderful Maki Murakami and I'm only using her ideas and a bit of my own artistic license to write a story.

**Chapter Two**

_It was dark, quiet and peaceful. The creature grew restless, wanting to know the world outside of its enclosing walls. It fought to break free from its cocoon, to be liberated – to be born. Its reward did it get. The butterfly met the light. _

**OF CHAOS THEORY AND THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT **

Assessing their situation, Tohma's mind slipped further back in time to think over the circumstances that had brought them to where they were now. He tried to figure out which, if any, of the events and choices that made up his life had led him to the very spot he was at now, in the back of a Japanese taxi with a whole lot of issues weighing on his conscience.

Would everything still be the same if he'd done anything differently? If someone else, someplace else, had done something differently? Chaos theory relied on the so-called Butterfly Effect: a minute change in the initial conditions of a complex system having large consequences in the long-term evolution of that system. The weather system was such an example. It was said that the batting of a butterfly's wings on the other side of the world could cause a tornado in Tokyo a few days later. Suddenly, the bizarre idea that, this very minute, a little, evil butterfly might be batting its powdery thin wings in New York haunted his mind. The presence of chaos in physics was also what gave the universe its "arrow of time", the irreversible flow from the past to the future. Once more he was reminded of the cruelty of the laws of the cosmos – what was past was past and couldn't be changed no matter what. He shook the strange thoughts off and his mind somehow ended up traveling back a few years, to his days as an undergraduate student.

After spending a year in New York, where he'd polished his English skills into full fluency, Tohma had traveled back to Japan and started a degree in Market and Finance at the prestigious university of Tokyo. Half way through his time at university, Tohma had discovered his love for music and applied his knowledge at the piano to one of two keyboards of a five piece band named 'Glass Shards'. Glass Shards had nothing to do with his university life and provided him with a nice form of escapism on his otherwise strict daily regime.

Glass Shards' members complemented each other well in terms of musical ability and had gone on to play in a few small gigs. They were quite successful and well known locally, especially amongst the female student population where they counted with a few die-hard fans. Six months after forming, however, the band had been reduced to three members. Their bassist, Hitoshi Sato, and their guitarist, Takeshi Sato, had left the band to try their luck as entrepreneurs in the music software business. The band, having been stripped of almost half its crew and two major instruments, had then changed their style radically. The three remaining members' original intention had been to experiment with a new style of music involving two synthesizers to produce the sounds of guitar and bass, in the hope the Sato brothers might return if unsuccessful. Glass Shards was the original gathering of five musicians and so the three who remained felt a rename of the band was in order for the time being. They had called themselves 'Nittle Grasper'.

Before they knew it, their innovate and unique style, together with the powerful voice of their lead singer, Sakuma Ryuichi, had taken the three up to unstoppable stardom. In a matter of months the new band had a two year contract with one of Japan's most respectable record studios and they were touring the country, collecting thousands of loyal fans and becoming one of the most successful J-pop bands in history. They were being idolized and praised by the public and the press alike, all the while loving every minute of their time at the top. For almost two years, the three inseparable friends rode the rollercoaster of fame, having the absolute time of their lives

Tohma had dropped out of his degree with a few months to finish. He was still in bad terms with his family for "throwing away all the money and effort they'd poured into his education", but Seguchi Tohma had absolutely no regrets. He had what he had always wanted: a lot of money and fame. Yet, with those came something unexpected, something he didn't know he had longed for as well: loyal people whom he could call his friends. The fact he hadn't achieved his dreams via his original intentions was not important. In fact, what he got in the end happened much more quickly and amusingly than going through the hierarchy of a standard job, as he had first intended. He had also found, with surprise, that he really enjoyed the J-pop star lifestyle, with its vertiginous work, emotional pace and unexpected highs and lows. They gave him a rush like nothing else did. Being part of Nittle Grasper for those two years, Tohma had learnt more about himself than he had done the rest of his life. For one, he had realized, amongst other things, that he'd been striving to achieve what he thought he wanted for himself when, in fact, he'd been pursuing what his family had made him believe he wanted. Now Tohma was true to his desires and aspirations in life and happy to have chosen a different path for himself. He didn't know many people who could honestly say the same thing and he thought himself very lucky.

Noriko Sei was the third star in Orion's belt, so to speak – Nittle Grasper's third pillar. A few weeks before Nittle Grasper's contract was due for renovation, she announced to their manager that she'd be taking a break to have a baby. Tension and arguments broke out with the record company, but it couldn't be helped: Noriko was almost two months pregnant already. Five weeks later, millions of hearts were broken as Japan mourned the split-up of the most international band they'd ever harboured. Noriko's pregnancy was kept concealed and the public re-assured by a final press conference. In an interview with Grasper's manager the fans were told Nittle Grasper would only be going on a twelve month hiatus while its members rested, since they'd been working themselves to exhaustion.

Nittle Grasper's split-up had taken place in mid-September. Ryuichi had spent the last ten months traveling and getting to know the countries they'd toured, not having been able to do so whilst immersed in the band. In mid-October, eight months ago, Noriko had gotten married to the father of her child, Tetsuya Ukai - a man much older than her and a university professor. The wedding was also meant to be a secret, but the paparazzi had gotten hold of pictures of the event and of her obvious state of pregnancy, since she'd been seventeen weeks pregnant at the time. Nittle Grasper's members had still been riding the crest of fame and so, when the pictures were published with all sorts of gossip about the married couple, a wave of commotion rippled across the nation.

Some said Tetsuya married Noriko because of her money. Others said she was a flirt and took part in outrageous sex parties at notoriously lavish gatherings for the rich and famous, and that she'd gotten pregnant and forced him to marry her. The truth was that they'd met each other in a restaurant and fallen in love. The way Noriko told it, one night at her flat, the couple had drunk one too many Cosmopolitans after an amazing evening and ended up having unprotected sex. But no one wanted to believe in fairy tales, especially if they happened to people who were already considered too fortunate by some. Right now, Noriko was taking care of her five months-old baby girl, Saki. She still lived in Tokyo with her husband and they were both trying to keep away from the public eye.

The band's break up had given Tohma the opportunity to seize the chance towards taking the first steps for creating his own record label. It couldn't be denied he was still a business-minded individual, despite having dropped out of his degree. His experience in the industry had provided him with a large list of handy contacts, a round knowledge on the music business in general, and heaps of yen in the bank. On top of that, his leadership skills and an innate talent for making his enterprises successful put him in a prime position to make a name of himself in the Japanese music industry. Plenty of people around him thought Tohma had the brains and means necessary to achieve anything he set his mind to, and so many jumped in the wagon to practically-guaranteed entrepreneurial success. Soon enough, things were on the rise for the ambitious Seguchi Tohma. The opportunity to travel abroad to work for a prestigious international media company came up around the same time the Uesegi's were contemplating the possibility of sending Eiri away from Kyoto, and so taking Eiri with him to New York had simply killed two birds with one stone.

Eiri, who had been fifteen at the time, had been unsettled in Kyoto, where he lived with his father, brother and sister in the family temple. He had been teased at school for his foreign looks and often got into fights with the other youngsters. His grades had been on a downward track ever since the Uesegi matriarch had become ill and died, but he still passed his subjects with little study which proved he was capable of academic brilliance, but chose not to use his brains accordingly.

Tohma Seguchi was engaged to the oldest of the Uesegi siblings, Mika Uesegi, who had filled in the role of mother for her two young brothers ever since the woman had passed away. The marriage had been arranged by Mika and Tohma's parents even before Tohma had become part of Grasper, to which the young couple had presented no opposition. The two of them had been together on a few dates and liked each other well enough. They were both very active people with little time for romanticism in their busy schedules and so marriage had seemed convenient and was welcomed by both parties.

With all her obligations at the temple, Mika had little time for courting. Currently, the marriage had been postponed until Mika's brothers were old enough to live alone with their father, and until Tohma's career was stably settled. They still had no exact date for the wedding, but it wasn't to take place for another couple of years at least.

Ever since their coming together to America, right before the New Year, the soon-to-be-brothers in law had forged a special relationship. Eiri had proved to be a bright, passionate teenager with a wild imagination and an incorrigible, but endearing, romantic streak, like those of history's tragic poets and story-tellers. Tohma had seen the seed for success in Eiri back in Japan, and had offered to help by taking the kid with him to New York. Tohma had promised Eiri would learn English, basic science, Japanese, and world history and literature, as well as broaden his life experience. Everyone had agreed it was a good idea and they harboured high expectations for the teenager. The Uesegi patriarch, in particular, was looking forward to "having his eldest son returned with some sense knocked into that youthful head of his, ready to take over the family temple as a dutiful son".

The experience of living together in New York, however, had proved to be just as valuable and rich for both of them. On Wednesdays, the two of them would go to one of Broadways' forty theatres to see a play; on Fridays, the latest blockbuster at the cinema; and on Sundays, they would walk around Central Park. They visited restaurants, parks and museums, and kept each other company. They became friends and confidants. Tohma started teaching Eiri how to play the piano and Eiri read his first poems and short stories to Tohma. They played cards and Tohma almost always won at Poker, throwing Eiri into a half-hearted tantrum. At night time, they would curl under a blanket on the sofa and watch television or converse. They talked about trivial and philosophical matters, making each other laugh until their stomachs hurt. Sometimes, though, they became so angry with each other, they kept distant and cold towards one another for days. The latter usually happened because Tohma had a practical, down to Earth, and somewhat cynical approach to life whereas Eiri's view was altruistic and filled with the naiveté appropriate of a romantic sixteen year old. A couple of days would pass and then, without realizing it, the two were back on normal terms. There was no need for apologies, make-up gifts, or gestures of forgiveness on either part. It was a rather strange alliance, some might say, given the age gap and the personality differences, but it seemed to work.

Eiri spent every afternoon at New York Public library on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, whilst Tohma developed business relationships and learnt the ways of the stock trade in midtown Manhattan, which harboured most of the financial offices now, as opposed to the more famous Wall Street. Tohma spent his time working with capitalist sharks, investing his gathered fortune to make an even greater one, watching the numbers in his bank account roll up as the weeks went by. At lunch times, Eiri would sit on the stairs outside the library between Patience and Solitude, the two impressive lions sculpted by Edward Clark Potter in the early twentieth century. Eiri had said to Tohma that the lions inspired strength and dignity and that he hoped one day people would feel like that when they looked at him or his work. Eiri had also said that one day he would do something important and be remembered by it. Tohma had smiled broadly and his chest had swollen with pride as he'd ruffled the youth's hair and enveloped the unsuspecting Eiri in a rib-crushing embrace, short of squealing his delight to the four winds. It was then that Tohma had known bringing Eiri to New York had been the best thing for the previously straying teenager.

When the weather was nice, many people would do as Eiri and sit on the library stairs, enjoying the few rays of sunshine that would play hide and seek in the clouds on the winter months. The youngster took pleasure in observing the crowds and their actions, usually drawing inspiration for stories from them. He also loved the hustle and bustle of the big city, so different from the peace and quiet of his place of birth. In the Big Apple, Eiri's looks weren't strange and he wasn't the only foreigner either. There, everything was different – new, big, loud, vibrant, a constant carnival of cultures and customs, heart-accelerating and ceaselessly exciting. And Eiri didn't want it to end; neither of them did. In the evenings, Tohma picked Eiri up at exactly the same spot on the library's concrete steps and they went out for dinner or to one of the activities they shared. Sometimes, they simply went home and Tohma started teaching Eiri how to cook and do the housework now that "Eiri was a bachelor", Tohma would say jokingly.

Soon after arriving, it had become clear that Eiri needed additional academic help, since the help Tohma offered him during weekends was not enough towards making the progress the youth desperately craved. After they'd been in America for a couple of months, Tohma came back from work telling Eiri he'd met a fellow Japanese man, a freelance tutor named Yuki Kitazawa. Their encounter had been a chance one. Yuki Kitazawa had bumped into Tohma one morning and apologized to him in Japanese by accident. The papers Kitazawa had been carrying had spilled all over the floor. As Tohma had helped him collect them, the two established a polite conversation.

It turned out that Kitazawa was a half-Japanese in his early twenties and was a bit of a bohemian soul who had spent most of his life traveling the world. He had settled in America only recently and was looking for a part-time job to help him pay the rent of his modest flat in Queens. He was a Classic Literature graduate and usually made his wages by taking on a couple of pupils and teaching them privately while he tried to make it big in the world of fiction. The papers he'd been carrying were printed advertisements of his services and Kitazawa had been touring the schools in the area posting the notices that morning. The tutor, a light brunette, gave off a trusting vibe and came across as a respectful and amiable individual. His demeanor was calm and graceful. He had a soft, soothing voice and a smile that made Tohma think Kitazawa and Eiri would get along well. In an unusual gesture of friendliness, and perhaps guided by the prospect of giving Eiri good news, Tohma had asked Kitazawa for his number and arranged a meeting with him the following week after checking his references.

Eiri was nervous about the meeting at first, but just as Tohma had predicted, Eiri took an immediate liking to Kitazawa. The three had dinner at Eiri and Tohma's luxurious flat by the Hudson River where introductions where first made. Eiri had just turned sixteen. It was the middle of February and white snowflakes were coming down from the sky on that fateful evening. The snow floated in the cold still air outside, hovering slightly before falling by the thousands in white star-shaped fractals blanketing the streets of Manhattan. They'd all been basking in the warmth produced by the heating indoors and looking out of the window when Kitazawa had made some hokey remark about the beauty of the weather outside. It had been one of those situations that had made the usually stoic Tohma almost embarrassed at the openness of character the tutor displayed. Most people would have probably laughed at the sensitivity of Kitazawa's statement, but Eiri had been very taken by it and had praised the other man. The blush covering Eiri's face probably hadn't come from the nice temperature of the dining room (as did Yuki's) or from embarrassment (as did Tohma's), but for entirely different reasons. Now that Tohma thought about, it all made sense in retrospective.

Yuki's charisma and Eiri's enthusiasm for learning with him had been all too readily obvious from day one. After Yuki had left the flat that first night, Eiri's unusual amber eyes had taken on a new look of excitement, and Tohma hadn't been able to deny Eiri's pleas to hire the young man. He had been so excited he hadn't gone to sleep until late hours of morning, chatting away animatedly and mentioning all the things he would now be able to do. Tohma had been proud he'd been the one to bring Eiri so much happiness and, inwardly, he'd patted himself in the back. How foolish he had been, Tohma thought now, but how could he have known?

The matter of fees had been settled the following day, on the condition Kitazawa kept Eiri as his only student to ensure the tutor would be at the ready in case Eiri needed to consult him. And so everything came to pass; just like that. Yuki became Eiri's private tutor, coaching him in the afternoons in the library and sometimes spending his time with Eiri in the evenings when Tohma's work kept him occupied until late hours of the night.

Alas, things never remain quite that simple. Tohma couldn't help but develop a burning jealousy towards the special relationship the other two soon formed and at seeing Eiri grow up, stumbling out of the shelter of Tohma's wing, and trying to fly away from the nest on his own. Eiri and Yuki hardly ever argued and when they disagreed, Yuki had a way of turning Eiri's opinions around without the kid realizing. Yuki had Tohma's precious sharp-minded teenager wrapped around his little finger, and it made Tohma more uncomfortable than he was willing to admit.

More and more often Eiri daydreamed during their time together, his innocent eyes sparkling at the mere mention of the tutor who had become such a nuisance in Tohma's eyes. He ignored his instincts, for Eiri's sake. After a few weeks, Tohma's opinion on the charming Kitazawa took a turn for the worse – he no longer liked him, but rather… loathed the man. Something now told Tohma the tutor was not to be trusted, but he put it down to his own egoistical and somewhat juvenile need to monopolize the youngster he'd grown to like more than anyone else in his life. It was because he felt lonely, he told himself, because he didn't feel needed anymore. As far as Tohma was concerned, they were petty reasons to dislike someone Eiri was so fond of, and so Tohma kept quiet and life took its course.

Because Eiri now had someone else with whom to spend his time, Eiri and Tohma's outings stopped being as frequent and their transcendental conversations were started more out of nostalgia than true need. Their words no longer carried the emotional power and complicity they had sparked before, with conversations dying soon after being started, like the shallow ripples in a pond of still water. Eiri didn't run to Tohma with his literary creations anymore, but sought Kitazawa instead. Eiri didn't question Tohma about the English language or the rhyme of a poem, but Kitazawa. He didn't even ask about equations any more despite the fact Tohma was better at Math than Eiri's tutor. By the time the snow caking the bare tree branches was replaced by sprouts of green leaves, the gap between Tohma and Eiri had widened irrevocably, and Tohma identified Yuki Kitazawa as the perpetrator.

At the beginning of spring, Tohma had gone as far as suggesting they got back to the old days and that he would try to do less work and help Eiri with his tasks, and that they should get rid of Kitazawa. It had been a daring suggestion to make, but one he'd convinced himself made sense. He'd thought about how to present his suggestion for days and after relaying the speech he'd planned, Tohma had finished with a statement suggesting "perhaps it was time Eiri became less dependent upon the help he received". The boy had been puzzled and offended. He'd said some nasty things back at Tohma and left the flat with a loud slam of the door. Eiri's words had rung in Tohma's ears all throughout that day, like echoes locked in a deep valley:

_Selfish. _

_Heartless. _

_Egocentric. _

_Clueless. _

Each one of them had carved its way into Tohma's heart and killed him inside a little, for he thought Eiri to be right, and that's what hurt the most. Kitazawa was Eiri's _friend_, he had said. Tohma had felt so guilty and disgusted with himself that he hadn't even reprimanded Eiri or punished him for his little act of delinquency when he'd showed up at midnight, looking tired and crestfallen. Tohma never did find out where Eiri had been that day or why he'd looked the way he had when he came back, but he had an idea. He suspected that Eiri was slightly infatuated with his tutor, and that the teenager's feelings were probably not returned. He didn't like thinking about that in depth, though. Something in his mind told Tohma it was inappropriate and too complicated to do so, not to mention he felt incredibly restless when he contemplated the idea for reasons he could not –and would not try to – muster.

Tohma pulled himself away from reminiscence and stopped looking out of the window of the car. Subconsciously, his hand reached out to pat the one lying on the seat next to his. Eiri remained mute and still. Eiri's hand felt cold against Tohma's skin. Tohma and Eiri had spent the last thirty minutes in traffic, sitting in the back of the taxi, watching yet another big city's lights pass them in a blur. Each person had been immersed in their own thoughts, which had led Tohma to thinking about the past. He found himself pained by dwelling on it, however, and his thoughts had turned darker once more at the possibility of Eiri harboring feelings for Kitazawa, so he'd broken them forcefully. Now he turned his gaze to Eiri who was still avoiding looking into his eyes and keeping dreadfully silent.

They'd taken the cab right outside the airport terminal after collecting their suitcase and going through customs. The air was stuffy and humid outside and the contrast between the fresh, dry air-conditioned interior of the airport and the moisture outside had made them break into sweat almost immediately. It seemed to Tohma that he'd spent a good portion of his life riding taxis now and, had he been under different circumstances, he would have laughed at the unlikelihood of that statement. What was more, Japanese taxis were also yellow, and a strange sense of Déjà vu was invading their ride to Ryuichi's apartment, taking it to a whole new level of surrealism.

Déjà vu: the feeling that you've been there before, at exactly the same place, with the same people, thinking the same thoughts, speaking the same words. Then, for the briefest of seconds, something truly strange happens: you think you can also recall what you did next. Your mind tricks you into thinking you can actually see the future ahead of you and then, as if you were observing a play, your actions aren't yours any longer, but a mere re-enactment. Tohma thought it all to be strange and beyond his scope of comprehension. He refused to think about the past anymore, and his mind switched back to delving into more practical matters. He questioned himself about the idea of bringing Eiri back to Japan so soon; but he'd acted under pressure and chosen what he thought to be the best path.

Tohma reckoned Eiri needed some time alone, away from his family and friends in Japan. He didn't think it would be appropriate to send him back home to Kyoto just yet. Right now, Tohma thought, what Eiri needed most was love, support and understanding from those around him; but Tohma didn't want to force Eiri to share his painful experience with anybody – if he didn't want to – in order to get them. Tohma guessed Eiri wouldn't want to tell the rest of his family members what had happened, so sending him back to the temple in the state he was currently at, would only exacerbate things for Eiri, since his family wouldn't be able to understand his behavior.

To top it all of, the head of the Uesugi clan, an elderly Buddhist monk, would probably look down on both Eiri and Tohma if they appeared in Japan without good reasons to back up their early arrival. That was a situation Tohma wanted to avoid at all costs, for it wouldn't do either of them any good. Eiri would, most likely, be expected to resume his duties at the temple and his studies in a local high school. In Tohma's opinion, however, the teenager wasn't ready to carry on a normal life just yet.

The situation was too delicate to leave it in the hands of fate, but Tohma still didn't know how to handle it. What about his job back in America? What were they to do now? It was going to be very hard to keep it all under wraps, and he hadn't actually given the matter serious consideration yet. It was too much to handle all at once. Despite knowing Eiri was traumatized by the incident, he didn't really know just how he felt about it all. As a matter of fact, Tohma was still in the shadows about what had happened exactly. For once in his life, 'brainchild Seguchi Tohma' didn't know where he was going, or what he was going to do. It was beyond frustrating and painful – it was Hell. Tohma was also worried that Yuki Kitazawa's body would be found eventually, and that the tutor's death be connected to Eiri and himself, despite a lack of records linking the three. There were many things troubling him, many more than he could handle calmly, but he tried to remain strong. One of the two had to, after all, and it would be him without a doubt. He would take it upon himself to make sure everything would be all right.

Tohma pulled himself away from thought once more when he noticed the familiar surroundings. He felt his heart thumping in his chest and realized he was sweating again despite the cool cab interior.

"It's that building up the road. The one with the glass doors and the security guard at the gate," Tohma told the taxi driver.

The guard knew Tohma and he greeted the pair politely when they got out of the vehicle after paying for their fare. He picked up their suitcase from the taxi driver and stepped onto the sidewalk.

"Hello Anzai-san," Tohma greeted the doorman back. "This is my to-be brother in law, Uesegi Eiri."

"Nice to meet you, Uesegi-san," Anzai-san replied with a slight bow. Eiri mirrored the man and bowed politely, too.

"Excuse his quietness. He's really tired from the long journey," Tohma said, putting his hand on Eiri's shoulder and squeezing lightly. He knew that the last thing Eiri wanted to do right now was to engage in a meaningless conversation with a stranger. As a matter of fact, Eiri seemed to be avoiding any kind of interaction with the real world. Tohma would see to it that they broke down the wall of silence he seemed to have erected. One thing at a time, though; all would be dealt with in due course.

When they started walking, Tohma noticed Eiri's walk was strange. He walked slowly, dragging his feet along the floor, his eyes fixed on his own little steps forward. The guard seemed to notice the funny walk, too, but said nothing about it, and slowed down his own walk. Obviously, he had no idea and no reason to think anything of it. Tohma, however, knew the reason: the boy was probably sore from the abuse he'd received. All those hours spent sitting down probably hadn't helped matters at all, either. Tohma felt the pang of pain and guilt again, but he pushed it aside, or else he'd lose all the control he still had over the situation. He walked alongside Eiri, still squeezing the teenager's shoulder. His hand trembled slightly.

Anzai-san tried to strike up small conversation with them. It must be a very boring and lonely job, the guard had, Tohma thought. Although there were probably fun aspects of a doorman's job as well. The guard probably knew the comings and goings of most residents in the building. Most of them were rich people in the entertainment business, who often led an extravagant way of life. The doorman must know who they went out with, where to, who they brought back, and what sort of activities they partook. It could be quite entertaining, if you liked that kind of thing, Tohma thought.

"Ryuichi san left a couple of months ago saying he didn't know when he'd be back. Australia, I think he said he was going," Anzai-san said as they walked through the spinning doors leading into a light pink marble receiving hall.

"He said he'd bring me back a nice present if I took care of his plants, so he left me the keys to his flat. Ukai-san has also come by a couple of times, to make sure I haven't run away with anything valuable or worthy of selling to the gossip magazines. I think she was shocked to find out Ryuichi trusted me with the keys. I'm an honest person, though. I wouldn't take advantage of a nice man like Sakuma-san," the doorman laughed heartily and the vibrations echoed in the hall. "She's very cunning, but she has no reason to worry." The man set the suitcase down and pressed the button to the lift.

Anzai-san took out a white handkerchief from the front pocket of his uniform jacket and wiped his sweaty brow. The man looked hot in his black doorman's uniform with golden buttons clinched up to the neck, complete with white gloves and a black flat hat. "I bet you haven't missed this weather!" he blurted out suddenly. "The rainy season is coming on slowly this year. They said in the news today that it would really kick off today or tomorrow, but I don't believe it. They said exactly the same thing a couple of days ago and we still have no rain. It's just this horrible humidity in the air. I suspect the truth is these so-called scientists have no clue how the weather works, and they don't want to admit it." The lift arrived with a 'bing' and the guard put the suitcase inside it.

"I think you are right, Anzai-san," Tohma replied. "The weather system is chaotic, impossible to predict one hundred percent accurately." _'Just like disasters in life,'_ Tohma added to himself inwardly, feeling gloomy. Anzai-san gave him the set of keys Ryuichi had given him and asked him to look after Ryuichi's plants during their stay. Tohma pocketed the keys and almost forgot that tipping in Japan wasn't a common thing to do. He then got into the lift with Eiri and used the key Ryuichi had lent him to access the top floor.

"I'll give the keys back to you when we leave. Have a nice evening," Tohma bid his farewell.

"Thank you, sir. You, too," came the reply.

Ryuichi's apartment was the only one at the top of the building, and it was comprised of all of an impressive four hundred square meters. The place was incredibly large, not to mention expensive, for Japanese standards. Tohma dropped the suitcase by the door and took his shoes off in the foyer as he watched Eiri walk through the second door into the large apartment. The floors were made out of cherry wood parquet; the room greeting them after the second door being a large rectangular lounge, scarce in furniture and with floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a breathtaking view of the Tokyo skyline. Eiri pressed his hands to the glass and rested his forehead against the window, leaving a vapor circle there with his breath.

"It's magnificent, isn't it? Ryuichi and I fought for this place, but he won the bet in the end. People underestimate Ryuichi, he's a very clever man," Tohma said as he came walking behind Eiri and stood next to him. From the view out of the window, the people and the trees looked like small toys one could gather and crash in their hands if one so wished and the many colorful lights visible adorned Tokyo city like sparkling garlands on a Christmas tree. Tohma watched Eiri stretch his arms across the window, in a cross position, and turn his face so that his cheek lay against the glass. The flat smelled like it'd been shut for a long time and the furniture was covered in white sheets to keep the dust from settling on its surface. It reminded Tohma of the blanket of snow that had covered New York on many occasions this past winter. That time felt incredibly illusory and far away right now.

"I wish the glass would disappear," Eiri whispered. "I wish it were just me and the lights in the dark, floating. I would let the wind take me and carry me away."

"Eiri…" Tohma clenched his fists at his sides, feeling frustration and emotionally clumsy for not knowing how to comfort him. He looked out of the window, into the starless Tokyo sky. The long winding roads below were filled with speeding cars, their red tail-lights almost static in the distance, like swarms of suspended fireflies glowing in the seemingly endless night. Just like Tohma couldn't see the end of the roads, he couldn't guess what the future held in stock for them, and it'd be foolish to pretend he wasn't afraid. He rested his weight on the glass, too, on his right shoulder, and faced Eiri, whose eyes were closed. The boy's skin looked terse and a bit pale in the penumbra created by the distant backdrop, and the veins underneath it remained invisible to the naked eye. He looked serene and wasn't crying, for which Tohma was glad. After forty eight hours without sleep, hardly any food, and all the stress and emotional tension, they were finally truly alone, back at home; just the two of them, like it should have always been.

"The bastard deserved it," Tohma said without thinking. "You shouldn't feel guilty." Eiri's eyes opened wide. His mouth trembled a little, showing a thin line of white teeth. He opened it to speak but only ended up biting his bottom lip.

"I trusted him," Eiri whispered in the smallest of voices. "How could he do that? Why did he hate me so much? What did I do? I don't understand. I… I…" Eiri bit his bottom lip again, squeezing his eyes shut and taking in a shaky breath. Tohma placed a hand in his back and caressed it soothingly, in slow upward and downward strokes, as if trying to absorb Eiri's pain into himself.

"– loved him. I know," Tohma finished for him. "That's exactly why he deserved it."

A raindrop fell on the window just then, barely missing Eiri's face by an inch. Then another raindrop fell, and then another. Soon enough, the skies torn open and hard rain poured down outside, forming a liquid curtain of water sliding down the glass. It seemed that the meteorologists got it right this time – although late, the rainy season had finally arrived in full in Japan. Tohma moved behind Eiri. He reached out with his hands to bring his arms off the window and into Eiri's chest, where he folded them as Tohma covered them with his own in an awkward hug. The world seemed to come to a stop, but it was all just an illusion, and Tohma knew it.

"Everything is going to be all right," Tohma whispered in Eiri's ear. "I promise." He really hoped he could carry his promise through and he would try his hardest to fulfill it. He rested his chin on Eiri's shoulder and the two watched Tokyo being cleansed by the heavy rain.

For a crazy moment, Tohma thought he could hear that far-away butterfly flap its wings in mid-flight – whoosh, whoosh: an augury of a yet stronger storm to come. Chaos was being set in motion; the arrow of time plunged ahead unhindered.

_To be continued_

_

* * *

_

In the next chapter someone else enters the scene and we find out more about what happened in New York. Can Eiri and Tohma go back to a normal life in Japan? Will they be able to fence off the ghosts and demons chasing them? Stay tuned to find out.

One of my favourite Grasper Pictures:

w w w(dot)patosan(dot)co(dot)uk/patimages/NittleGrasper(dot)jpg

New York Public Library:

w w w(dot)patosan(dot)co(dot)uk/patimages/NYpubLibrary(dot)jpg


	3. Riders on the storm

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravitation or the characters portrayed within it. They belong to the wonderful Maki Murakami and I'm only using her ideas and a bit of my own artistic license to write a story.

_In wings of Channel, she walks in the twilight._

**  
Chapter Three**_  
_  
**Riders on the Storm **

The street Tohma walked down was empty. He checked his wristwatch again: 07:48 am, Sunday. He did the math in his head and quickly calculated it was 5:48 pm, Saturday, in New York. He wrapped his long coat tighter around his neck, but neither the coat nor the hat he was wearing stopped him from getting wet. The rain that had started the previous night hadn't let out and he hadn't found an umbrella at Ryuichi's apartment before he'd left, so now he found himself entirely at the mercy of the elements – a strong wind and an unforgiving downpour characteristic of Japan's rainy season. Apparently his friend didn't mind getting drenched in the rain. Either that or he'd taken his umbrellas with him to Australia, in which case he would be in for a surprise. Tohma almost smiled at the vision of Ryuichi holding an open umbrella in the middle of sunny Sydney, or better yet, the Aussie Outback.

Quickening his pace Tohma reached his destination: a public payphone down the street from Ryuichi's apartment complex. A few chain department stores flanked both sides of a road that on any other day would have been fairly busy, but that on a Sunday morning was completely deserted. Not a soul was in sight.

He picked up the bulky, green receiver and cradled it against his shoulder. He put in some change and dialed a number he knew off by heart. The number started with the two international digits and he followed it with the code for the US, the prefix for New York and a home telephone number. It wasn't long until he got a ringing tone and Tohma was waiting in the rain with his eyes closed. He found the sound and sensation of the heavy drops pelting down on his head soothing to his senses. Crystal-clear droplets of water hung onto the edges of his hat, like morning dew about to fall from a mushroom. On the seventh ring someone picked up.

"Andrew?"

A brief pause followed before he got a reply. "Who's this?" the voice at the other end inquired in American accented English. The line was clear, but the payphone was not enclosed, and the sound of the rain drowned the voice of the speaker a little. Tohma covered his right ear with a hand.

"Andrew?" he repeated.

"Tohma? Is that you? You sound kind of funny."

"Yes, it's me," Tohma replied in the same language Andrew had used to address him.

"Jesus Christ! It's about fricking time you called. Where the hell have you been? I've been looking all over for you since yesterday morning. I even left a few messages in your phone because I heard you were feeling sick when you left the office on Thursday. Are you all right?"

When Andrew spoke of Thursday Tohma once again had the strange notion that time was being warped around him. Thursday's events were already blurry in his head, as though they had taken place a long, long time ago; or as though they belonged with the fuzzy and convoluted memories more commonly associated with the stupor of drunken nights. "I'm… okay. Well, kind of." Tohma's voice came out raspy, and he had to clear his throat to speak. "Listen—"

"Man, you owe me big time," Andrew cut in, "I had to cover your ass at the office yesterday. When everybody started asking I told Nicky you'd called me in the morning and told me you wouldn't be able to make it to work, but that I'd forgotten to tell her. You should have seen how she looked at me when I told her with a straight face. It was almost ten by the time I figured you weren't coming and I think she smelled something fishy was going on, but she won't say a word, so don't worry."

Tohma was shocked at the conversational tone of his friend, when he remembered that the rest of the world wasn't immersed in the same turmoil that he was. "I'm sorry to have imposed on you, Andrew. Thank you for the trouble. Was everything okay yesterday?" Tohma tried to sound normal, but his words came out drawled. He felt slightly dizzy and had a headache like he hadn't had since the first few crazy months of Nittle Grasper. It felt as though his brain was coated with drying cement. He took a deep breath through his nose, to clear his head.

"Yeah, it was all right, don't you worry." Andrew chortled. "I never get tired of you being all proper and Japanese, you know? But, seriously, it was no trouble at all. We are friends, right? You'd have done the same for me. Besides, Mr. Riley went to some weekend conference in Philadelphia so everybody was doing the Friday afternoon slacking ritual anyway."

Tohma couldn't help a small smile at the memories of slower-paced Friday afternoons in New York. People always seemed to be friendlier on Fridays, a message of 'Have a good weekend' thrown over their shoulder as they sneakily left the office early with a twinkle in their eyes.

"What were you doing yesterday if you weren't sick?"

A drop of water fell off Tohma's hat and found its way down a lock of hair and onto the side of his neck, where it precipitated further down the collar of his shirt and the base of his neck. Tohma shuddered. "It's a long story," he said. Sighing, he decided to start with the obvious. "The truth is I'm in Tokyo right now." Tohma rested his arm on the payphone and pressed his forehead to it, letting his head roll to the side over his damp jacket sleeve. Through the small gap between the payphone and his arm he could see the outline of a person walking towards him in the far distance. The image was just a distorted dark blur moving under the rain, further up the street. Tohma rolled his head back on his arm to look at the little screen on the receiver and to check the status of the line.

"Andrew?"

"Sorry, I was looking at my watch. Are you serious? You are in Tokyo _right now_? This very minute? What time is it there? Is everything okay?"

Tohma sighed and looked to the floor. Needles of rain fell all around him, initiating little ripples when they hit a thin layer of water around his feet. "No, everything's not okay, actually."

"Oh, no. Nothing too serious, I hope." Andrew's tone sobered up, exuding genuine concern.

"The truth is things are very complicated right now. It's a family problem. Something serious unfortunately," Tohma talked around his situation without being specific. His hat had tipped forward slightly and the back of his hair was now getting wet as well. He was getting soaked in the rain, but he didn't care. Any punishment, be it self-inflicted or otherwise, was welcomed by him.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Andrew said and awaited further elaboration. Tohma didn't provide it, however, so Andrew filled in the void in the conversation with a simple, "I understand." Tohma remembered a time last year when Andrew received a phone call early in the morning. Afterwards, he took off without giving any explanations and it wasn't until the next day that they learnt what had happened. His brother's wife was involved in a car accident and had died instantly. Andrew had rushed back home to Chicago right after hearing the news. He'd forgotten to tell their bosses about his circumstances, but lucky for him Riley had been understanding, and Andrew didn't even get a reprimand for not giving notice of his sudden departure.

"I'm sure you do," Tohma said.

"Listen, Tohma, whatever it is, I'm sorry. If there is anything at all I can do to help, just give the word."

"Thanks, Andrew." Tohma was stalling. He knew Andrew must be wondering the purpose of the call. The two men were quite close, but not close enough for Tohma to call and pour his heart out to Andrew.

"I guess this means you won't be coming in on Monday then. Don't worry about the meeting with Gordon, okay? We'll manage without you. I'll get John to help me with it. Also Riley will be back by then."

Tohma cursed inwardly. The truth was that wasn't the reason he was calling; in actuality, he had completely forgotten about that meeting. He hated letting people down, no matter what his personal circumstances were. However, the sudden realization that he was being unreliable at work seemed like a trifling matter next to the other instances in his life where he felt he had failed over the last few days. It was just a drop of water in an ocean of self-disappointment, a meager drop of rain in a downpour of emotions.

"Yes, that's right. I won't be back for the meeting with Gordon, but you know I keep the folders in the cabinet in my office. I didn't lock it on Thursday, so just help yourself to them," Tohma improvised a reply.

"Will do," Tohma heard through the line. "Andrew, the other reason I was calling is to check if you could do me a favor before I talk to Riley myself. I think he won't like what I have to tell him and I'd like you to get some of my stuff from my office before I turn in my resignation."

"Your resignation?" Andrew asked scandalized, but he quickly got himself under control. "Your resignation?" he asked again, this time more calmly.

"My resignation," Tohma said in a low voice.

"Tohma…" The sound of Andrew's half-frustrated sigh came out clear through the line. "There must be another way. If you need some time off, I'm sure they'll give it to you."

Tohma didn't say anything.

"You haven't been with us long, but you already have a better track record than people who've been working here a lot longer. I don't know what advice to give you since I don't know the particulars, but I can tell you one thing: think about this, don't throw all your hard work away. We are a team, you and I, remember?"

"I don't think I have an alternative at the moment." This time it was Tohma who sighed.

"Perhaps you could arrange a long-term leave. Or maybe–"

Tohma shook his head, "Andrew, listen to me. The truth is I don't think I'm coming back there any time soon. It's over. I'm sorry."

"I need to sit down," Andrew exhaled, sounding bewildered. Andrew Leighton was a little more than Tohma's best acquaintance at the office. He had proved to be an open and friendly guy with Tohma from day one, welcoming him warmly as part of the team despite the competitive nature of their posts. In a world where everyone was waiting for their chance to see you stumble and fall, Andrew had given Tohma all the right advice and shown him the ropes of the trade over the first few hectic weeks. Additionally, the Japanese way of life and culture were radically different to those of the western world. Luckily for Tohma, though, Andrew had smoothed out those differences for him, making the transition from a continent on the other side of the world a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. Tohma knew that part of the reason he had settled down so soon professionally, and by default outside of work, was thanks to the man who was now waiting for some sort of explanation at the other end of the line, half way across the world. Tohma knew he owed that explanation to him. Moreover, Tohma wanted to give it, and to share his burden with someone. He took a deep breath and braced himself.

"I'm sorry I can't be more explicit right now." As soon as the words left his mouth Tohma felt a pang of regret and relief at the same time. He would not be foolish and rash in sharing his emotions. This burden was just the first of very many he would have to carry on his own.

"That's… that's fine." Andrew sounded disappointed, as though he'd expected Tohma to confide in him after all. Tohma could picture the sad smile that was certainly at the other end of the line, but he pushed his hesitations aside. "I'm sorry I can't tell you anything at the moment. It's complicated."

"Nah, forget it." A short stretch of silence followed before Andrew spoke again. "Tell me, old buddy, what can I do for you?"

Tohma proceeded to tell him. When he was almost done Tohma glanced to his right again. The person who'd been walking towards him was clearly visible now. It was a woman. A pair of long, slender legs peeked out from under a black skirt that hugged her thighs and stopped before the knees. Her face was hidden under a black umbrella she was holding in front of her to stop the rain that came down at an angle. She had a stylish and slightly coquettish way of walking, positioning one foot in front of the other to make her hips sway subtly. Her scarlet-red high heels tapped against the large concrete slabs of the pavement, and when Tohma turned to face the payphone again, he could hear the constant tapping of her footsteps moving closer over the pitter-patter of the rain.

"Is that all? Anything else you'd like me to do?" Andrew asked.

"Yes, don't tell anyone at the office you've spoken to me. I'll explain tomorrow. I'll call you again." The approaching footsteps were getting louder, and Tohma tried to focus his attention on the phone conversation.

"All right, if that's what you want. You can call my home or mobile phone any time, okay? And I mean any time. I don't know what the time difference is, but it doesn't matter. The wife might mind it if it's in the middle of the night, but I'll handle her."

Tohma smiled a little. "Thank you, Andrew. This time I definitely 'owe you big time'." A light chuckle reached his ear through the phone line just as the woman passed Tohma on the otherwise empty street. A cloud of sweet perfume trailed subtly behind her as she did, and Tohma caught her scent mingled with the damp air and the mist of rain. He could almost taste it on his tongue. He breathed in again. The fragrance was fresh, familiar, and it somehow triggered a memory; a memory that was still fuzzy and abstract as it tried to come into focus and to full life in Tohma's brain. Instinct told him that it was a nice memory.

"Don't mention it. I'll talk to you tomorrow then. Take care, Tohma."

"Yes. You, too. Thanks again." Tohma put the receiver down, wondering if he'd done the right thing by calling Andrew. He shook his head; it was too late now to regret calling. Tohma turned right to walk to the other place he'd meant to visit on his outing, but he halted straight away, feeling something in his surroundings was out of place. He soon realized what it was: the footsteps had stopped, and the white noise of rain washing the streets was all he could hear. He turned around slowly and looked up. The woman who had passed him a minute ago was standing still with her back to him, a couple of meters away from the payphone. Now that he could see her back, he could see she was quite tall and that her hair came down to her shoulders. She turned around almost immediately after he did. Sleek tendrils of chestnut hair whipped around for a fraction of a second before the umbrella turned around with her, hiding her hair and her face.

Suddenly, the memory materialized in Tohma's brain, hitting him with the force of a ton of bricks. _A fashion show. New York. Two months ago. The exclusive perfume he'd bought. _The nice feeling surrounding the memory turned to one of dread. Tohma staggered backwards slightly. Out of all the possible people he could bump into in a lonely street of Tokyo at eight in morning; out of all the possible people he could meet on his first day back in Japan… this had to be the worst possibility. Tohma's mind concluded it had to be an illusion.

The black umbrella lifted slowly. Each thing next happened as if in very slow motion. First he saw the small, heart-shaped mouth, painted the same hue as the stiletto shoes. Then he saw the small, slightly pointed nose, and lastly were the widest brown eyes he'd ever seen. Tohma's suspicions became a reality. A heavy feeling of sickness settled at the pit of his stomach. The world suddenly got very small, much too small, and it was spinning out of control right under his feet. He felt trapped in the illusion.

"Seguchi-san? I thought it was you. But it cannot be!" Her big brown eyes were wild with incredulity. Her voice was just like he remembered: a bit on the shrieking side, strong, full of commanding power. For a second he almost believed her. It couldn't be! Of course it couldn't be, his brain screamed. It was all an illusion. An elaborate illusion created by his overactive brain. Blood rushed through his temples and he heard her speak as if through a thick wall.

"It cannot be because you are supposed to be in America with—"

"—your brother," he heard himself interrupt her. "Uesugi-san, something terrible has happened. I know not where to begin explaining." Despite the rain, Tohma felt his body start to sweat under his layers of wet clothing.

She was gawking at him as though she was sure he was an illusion as well. Tohma sighed, "Would you accompany me to the supermarket?" His request sounded surreal even to his own ears, despite knowing what he had meant to say. The jumbled statement and cryptic question definitely weren't the first thing he'd pictured himself telling his fiancé in person on their first meeting back in Japan. For better or for worse, however, those were the words that came out from his mouth. He couldn't take them back now. She knew something was horribly wrong and it showed on her face.

* * *

Tohma entered the supermarket. It was one of the hundreds 7-11's that were sprinkled all over Tokyo city, with large kanji symbols displayed on the glass windows. Horizontal fluorescent tubes hang from the ceiling by short, plastic cables, lighting aisles packed with fruit, vegetables, canned food, freezers, and rows of video games, consoles, DVDs and alcohol. Their bright white light reflected off the cheap, plain tiles of the floor where he was leaving a wet puddle with his drenched clothes. His shoes made a squelching sound whilst Mika's red stilettos made a clacking sound behind him, similar to the one he'd heard on the street, but sharper. Their walk was a periodic rhythm that drilled into his heavy head, along with Mika's eyes on the back of his head. Squelch, squelch. Clack, clack. Squelch, squelch. The 7-11 was as lonely as the street outside and its sterile appearance added to Tohma's sense of chillness. Cold sweat ran down his spine and he shivered. 

"What are you doing in Tokyo, Uesugi-san?" Tohma asked his fiancé, addressing her politely in an even voice. Despite having been engaged for some time, they hadn't met each other many times or spoken to each other enough to be on a first names basis yet.

"I could ask you the same question, Seguchi-san," she replied just as dryly. A million and one questions seemed to be hanging from her lips, but she didn't utter a single one of them. Instead, she kept her little mouth tightly pursed and her walk brisk. He'd told her he would explain everything, and asked her to give him some time to figure out how to tell her exactly. Tohma was glad she had complied and followed him to the supermarket where he planned to buy some breakfast for Eiri and himself, since Ryuichi didn't have any food in the apartment. Tohma stopped and scanned the shelf with his eyes, picking up a couple of items from it and putting them in a basket. He knew he couldn't stall for much longer, however. He had been avoiding Mika's inquisitive stare ever since he'd turned around and walked away from the payphone. She had walked behind him all that time, close enough for part of her umbrella to shelter his back from the downpour.

"Seguchi-san," Mika started, her tone questioning, "Where's my brother? Is he with you?"

Tohma knew when his time had run out. He went straight to the point. "Uesugi-san, there was an… incident in New York this Thursday. Eiri's tutor is dead."

Mika Uesugi drew in a sharp intake of breath and took a small step back. It was clear that wasn't what she'd been expecting to hear. It was shocking news, but nothing compared to what he hadn't told her yet. "Kitazawa-san is? How? When? What happened? Is Eiri okay?"

"There was an incident. I shouldn't have let it happen, Uesugi-san. I'm so sorry."

"What are you talking about? Where's my brother? What happened?"

"Your brother is at my friend Ryuichi's apartment. He was asleep when I left him and I was hoping to get back in time to wake him and give him breakfast. I would like for him to find me there if he wakes up. As you will probably understand, he's in a very fragile state at the moment. We need to go back as soon as possible." Tohma mustered enough energy to look at her then. His gaze was tired and defeated, his eyes bloodshot. He offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "I'll explain on the way."

* * *

"I don't understand what the message on the answering machine has to do with Kitazawa's death." Mika's voice came in a whisper as she and Tohma stepped inside the elevator. Tohma thought the words Kitazawa's death and Mika Uesugi shouldn't happen together. 

"Like I've explained already, the message was very confusing. He talked in a rush, and he sounded afraid or confused; I don't know. His voice was very low, as though he was whispering. All I could really grasp was that Kitazawa-san was acting strange, and then I heard someone say something in the background and the phone call ended." The elevator arrived and the doors opened but both of them stayed put. With the hand he wasn't using to hold the bag of groceries, Tohma held onto the key, keeping the lift doors open. He didn't pull the key out and the lift stood still in the top floor of Ryuichi's tall building.

"I'm so sorry," Tohma whispered.

Mika awaited further explanation. It was obvious she was getting tired of going around in circles. She wanted to hear what he was so sorry for, the reason he kept apologizing over and over again, without ever telling her what he was to blame for.

"I got home early on Thursday, but I wasn't feeling well, so I forgot to check the answering machine on my way into the apartment. I went and had a shower instead, and then I got changed." Tohma's voice grew quieter and quieter with every spoken sentence; his eyes were fixed on the fingers holding onto the elevator's key.

"Around forty-five minutes must have passed before I sat down and went through the answering machine messages. Eiri's message was from an hour before. I didn't know I had a message from Eiri, Uesugi-san. Usually he would be studying in the library all afternoon and he wouldn't call. If only I had known, then perhaps… perhaps if I had heard the message sooner I would have been able to do something. Even if I'd only heard it five minutes earlier, or if I had run more quickly, or even called the police…"

Mika frowned at the mention of the police. "The police? What do they have to do with this? Tohma, what happened?" She was growing more fearful and impatient by the minute.

Tohma's eyes were still open but they were unseeing. His mind was lost in the events of that evening. "I remember something inside me went wild with worry. A sixth sense told me that something was very wrong. I tried calling Eiri's mobile phone straight away, but it was switched off."

Mika hung onto every word that left Tohma's lips, her ears straining to listen. "Then I tried calling Kitazawa but his mobile phone was also switched off." Tohma swallowed and licked his dry lips, "I tried his house and someone picked up. Well, not exactly. It sounded more as though the phone had been knocked over and then I heard some loud voices. I thought I heard Eiri in the background, but I couldn't say for sure. Then the line went dead. When I called again I couldn't get through; the line had been disconnected."

Tohma's reddened eyes shifted to look into his fiancé's. It was as though he was hoping he could transmit to her what had happened next with will power alone, through the intensity of his eyes only. It seemed to work somewhat, for her mouth trembled and her breath hitched. The words resonated inside his head, but he couldn't speak them. Tohma didn't know what would happen if he said the words out loud. He didn't know if he could utter them because they would finally make the last few days real. It wouldn't be Eiri and Tohma's secret any longer. What he had allowed to happen would be something someone else in the Uesugi family would know; something someone else in the world would know. New responsibilities would have to be shared, and judgments would be passed on. He knew the time to face up to the facts would eventually come, but he wasn't prepared for it to be this soon. His head was spinning, his mouth was dry and his stomach tied up in knots. He was fighting the urge to be sick. This was the moment he had been dreading from the instant he'd realized his fiancé, Eiri's own sister, had crossed his path in a lonely street of Tokyo under an ashen, turbulent sky.

Their eyes stayed locked together for a moment that seemed to stretch to eternity. A sense of foreboding was etched on Mika's face – her jaw set firmly, her eyes unblinking, her breath now arrhythmic. The tension of unspoken words inside the lift was so palpable it could almost be sliced with a blade.

"When I got there he was dead already, Uesugi-san." Tohma's hands started to shake and the plastic bag he was carrying rustled against his leg.

"I don't understand, Tohma!" Mika's hands flew to grab Tohma's wet coat. Her long, red fingernails dug into his chest, but he didn't even flinch. She looked at him with confusion and fear in her dark pupils. She shook him, trying to extract from him the last few pieces of the puzzle. Tohma's almost inaudible words, however, only added more dimensions to the riddle. _His shoe. Assaulted. The shot. The gun. Blood. Dead._

"He killed him, Uesugi-san. Eiri-kun killed him," Tohma whispered. His eyes bore an expression of horror, as if he were only processing the information for the first time himself. A gasp escaped Mika when she heard those words. Her hands immediately left Tohma's lapel to clasp tightly over her mouth. Her eyes really were the widest brown eyes he'd ever seen.

A door clicked open along the corridor and they both turned to look. "Eiri," they whispered simultaneously. Eiri stood at the door like the image of a ghost, wearing a loose t-shirt and white baggy trousers. His hair was disheveled, his skin pale. He was as thin and lanky as a rake. His body went rigid and his eyes wide.

The moment Mika's foot stepped outside of the elevator Eiri reeled back and bumped against the door behind him. His arm came up in front of his chest in reflex, and when Mika grabbed it he flinched visibly. She pulled him towards her and wrapped her own long arms around him. At first it was as if Eiri was rooted to a spot on the floor by some invisible force. An expression of puzzlement and fear was etched on his face. Then, all of a sudden, his head slumped forward. Mika placed a hand to his neck, and drew him towards her chest. His hands came up and curled around the fabric of the back of her jacket in shaking fists forceful enough to make his knuckle go white.

"Mikarin…" he whispered. When she heard Eiri call her with the name he'd only used as a little child, the grown woman standing before them started to cry. Silent tears fell down her face, blurring her mascara.

Tohma stepped outside of the elevator and the doors closed behind him. The keys in his hand jiggled. His step was shaky and his legs turned to jelly. His knees gave way under him and he stumbled sideways. His right shoulder crashed against the wall of the corridor and his neck suddenly seemed to him too weak to hold his head upright. His head fell forward and the hat he was wearing dropped in front of him, spitting drops of water everywhere when it hit the carpet. The grocery bag slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. Some of its contents spilled out and all he could do was stare at them and the umbrella on the blue carpet. His throat was constricted, his eyes stung and he was finding it hard to get the air all the way to his lungs. A deep red flush covered his face and the rest of his body. He felt hot all over. He was drowning in shame.

For a while they lost track of time until Mika's feet shifted on the carpet and she sniffled, bringing them all out of their personal nightmare. She stopped crying, wiped her face with her fingertips and smiled awkwardly at her brother. "Eiri, you look so grown up," she said a bit shakily. A rush of breath went out of her mouth when she tried to smile again. For a moment it looked as though she was going to say something, but couldn't. She held his face and touched his cheeks with her slightly wet thumbs. "And you have grown so tall, too. I dare say you need a shave." She fumbled with his hair and straightened down his wrinkled shirt, then reached down to take his hands in hers and gave them a firm, re-assuring tug. "Seguchi-san here says you should be hungry. Now, why don't we go in and let me cook you something with the things Seguchi-san has bought?"

Mika turned around and watched Tohma. He looked up at them, but he didn't meet their eyes, looking past them and into Ryuichi's apartment instead. "I'll admit instant dried noodles would not be my choice for breakfast, but it will have to do," she said softly, smiling at him. His legs were weak still but he thought he managed to bend down and pick up his hat without showing it. He put it on and started picking up the groceries from the floor, feeling awkward by Mika's motherly attitude towards them both. He was a grown man and Eiri, though he didn't act like it sometimes, was on the verge of becoming a young man, too. Mika was only twenty-two. Tohma was the oldest and he thought he should be the one showing aplomb and taking care of them instead of acting like a kid whom had been handed too many responsibilities and broken down upon not delivering.

"Ryuichi-san has a rice cooker," Eiri said suddenly, sounding the most normal he had in the last few days. "He's also got some rice in a cupboard. I can cook some rice."

"Okay, then. You do that, and I'll see what else I can put together." Mika put a hand to Eiri's shoulder and steered him into the apartment. Tohma followed them shortly. Before long, the door was shut behind them and the three of them were minutes away from a world that would become theirs alone for years to come.

Mika opened the windows and removed the sheets off all the furniture in the lounge. Tohma went into the bathroom where he changed into dry clothes and Eiri started rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. Mika took the liberty of quickly shifting through Ryuichi's CD collection, but was disappointed to find it was composed mostly of modern Japanese pop and rock. She switched on the stereo and went to a classical music radio station. Soon, the clear notes of Chopin's _Prelude in D flat major_ otherwise known as 'Raindrop', filled Ryuichi's apartment. The piece earned its nickname because of the raindrop effect caused by a softly repeating D-flat note. The repeating note added a note of sadness to the otherwise tranquil opening of the melody; it haunted the rest of the piece and climaxed in an apparent downpour before the initial calm returned. She turned down the volume and left the melody as background music.

The kitchen, a medium sized room full of modern appliances with all of the manufacturer's stickers still on, looked as though it had never been used. Mika went inside it, where she and Eiri worked together in silence as they prepared a simple meal. They moved slowly and languidly around each other, their arms brushing together tenderly every now and then. Mika donned small physical gestures of affection on her brother – a hand on Eiri's shoulder, a ruffle of his hair, warm smiles and soft eyes. Eiri was never a touchy-feely person, but he welcomed all the contact and reassurance his sister gave him now, and he even seemed to seek it. In the meantime Tohma set the table.

When they finished, Mika and Eiri took the plates into the dinning room. The music that reached their ears now was that of the more dramatic and fast-paced opening to Chopin's _Fantasie Impromptu_, but it wasn't coming out of the speakers. Tohma was sitting down in the corner of the lounge, by the large glass windows. Weak rays of light came from behind him, cutting out his silhouette against the overcast background. His eyes were closed and his body tense as his hands danced upon the large array of black and white keys of a majestic grand piano. The piano was still partially covered by a white sheet; its excess fabric draped softly onto the wooden floor.

The melody stopped suddenly, leaving a void of silence behind. "We need to talk," he declared looking at his fiancé. Mika nodded and Eiri looked to the floor.

"I won't tell you what happened," Eiri said and put his tray down on the table. Mika did likewise. "All right… You don't need to be specific, but if I ask you some questions, will you answer 'yes' or 'no'?" Mika was asking but something in the way she said it left no room for argument.

Tohma got up and closed the lid of the black-lacquered grand piano with a soft thud. "Let's eat first," he said. And eat they did.

Half an hour later, they all sat around a small Japanese table, their legs folded and tucked under them in the Japanese way. After a moment, Eiri shifted on his spot, probably not accustomed to seating that way anymore. Eiri and Mika had been doing it for a lot longer and hence didn't have the same problem. His hands rested neatly on his lap and he was holding his breath. A nervous blush covered his cheeks.

Mika served some tea and spoke first. When she did, her voice was calm, non-accusative. "First of all, I would like to know why you flew over to Japan without as much as calling Kyoto first." Eiri and Tohma stayed silent. Mika sighed, "I don't care about Kitazawa," she said, glancing first at Eiri and then at Tohma. "If he did something to my brother that he shouldn't have done then he got what he deserved." She said the last sentence with her teeth clenched. A thin sheen of sweat coated Eiri's forehead and he wiped it with the back of his arm. "I'm most worried about you, Eiri," she added, looking at him.

"I'm fine," he said, wiping his hands on his lap.

"Uesugi-san," Tohma spoke finally. "If you don't mind I'd like to talk to you in private." He turned to look at Eiri and put a hand on his shoulder under Mika's watchful eyes. "Would you mind leaving the room for a moment?" Tohma asked. Eiri looked at his sister, asking for approval with his eyes. She nodded briefly and Eiri got up, bowed slightly and left. Tohma and Mika's eyes followed him to the door. When it closed they looked at each other, but said nothing.

Tohma's hands clenched in fists on his lap. He hadn't tried his tea.

"Seguchi-san?"

"There's no easy way to say this, Uesugi-san, so I'll make this as brief and painless as I possibly can for the both of us." Mika nodded, understanding.

"I think Kitazawa raped him." The words ripped through the air and lingered, full of meaning. Mika looked away from him, flinching and closing her eyes. She took in a deep breath. Tohma rested his elbows on the table, and interlocked his fingers together, making an inverted V shape with his arms.

"How can this be?" Mika whispered. Tohma pressed his mouth to his hands and when he spoke his voice came out quiet. "I think Eiri-kun loved him, Uesugi-san. In a romantic sense."

"What? How do you know that? What evidence do you have?" She sounded hurt and confused.

"It's hard to say. You had to see him when he was around his sensei to tell."

"Seguchi-san, why did you never say anything about this to me before? I'm his sister, and you are, you are – " Mika's voice trailed to silent. Her lower lip quavered.

"I'm nobody, I know," Tohma said flinching. Mika covered her mouth with her hand. "That's not what I meant to say," she said truthfully. "It's the truth, though." Tohma looked saddened. "I guess I never told you because I wasn't sure if it was just my imagination." Tohma swallowed. His mouth was dry but he didn't lick his lips.

"Even so, you should have shared your suspicions with me." Mika's tone was stern. "I can't believe this." She looked through him rather than at him.

"Uesugi -san, I'm only saying this now because I found something in Eiri's room last week that finally convinced me of his infatuation with his sensei. I know it may seem like a violation of his privacy, but I accidentally came across a stack of poems, written in Japanese, when I went into his room looking for a stapler. They were vague but I understood them because I know Eiri. One of them stood out in particular – _A Winter's Encounter_ was the title. The poem was full of metaphors, but it spoke of discovering first love, of mixed feelings and –" Tohma lowered his voice; he seemed to hesitate a moment before he uttered, "secret desires." Tohma couldn't handle looking at Mika whilst remembering the powerful poem and how it had left him feeling dizzy with realizations for two days after he'd read it. His hand reached out to grab the tea cup and he drank a little, softening the inside of his parched mouth. The tea was still warm.

Mika seemed to be finding her bearings. "Do you think he – they—" Tohma shook his head before she could finish the question. "I don't think so. I think his feelings weren't returned."

Mika sighed in relief. "Did you… did you speak to Kitazawa about this?"

Tohma closed his eyes and, slowly, he nodded. "God help me, what did I do?" His breath hitched.

Mika hesitated and put a hand on her future husband's shoulder. "It's not your fault, Seguchi-san," she said. "No one is to blame for the perversion of a wretched man." Tohma's shoulders slumped and he covered Mika's hand with his own. He hadn't planned to fall apart, but it seemed like he was falling through an endless pit whose bottom he couldn't see and he desperately needed to grab onto something solid. He fought the urge to cry. He breathed in deep, but the more he tried not to let the knot in his throat untangle, the tighter it seemed to squeeze him.

"I was in Kitazawa's building when I heard a gunshot. Eiri… he – he…" Tohma paused and swallowed. Mika moved closer to Tohma and put her other hand on top of his on the table. Tohma shook his head as if willing himself to speak. "It was a horrible sight, Uesugi-san. I'll never forget it." His hand squeezed Mika's on his shoulder, a bit too forcefully. His gaze was lost on the table and his cheeks were on fire. "If I'd arrived a few minutes sooner I would have shot the bastard myself," he said between clenched teeth. He looked at Mika then. His eyes were glassy and his voice a little high-pitched, but not a tear slid down his face. He was only crying on the inside. "Believe me, Uesugi-san, it was in self-defense."

"I believe you," she said quietly. "Tohma," she addressed him by his name for the first time ever. It was an act that came out naturally to her, for she now felt they shared a bond and an intimacy close to that of husband and wife. If Tohma noticed the change, however, he didn't show it. "What happened afterwards?" She whispered the question.

Tohma sighed and closed his eyes. "I covered up the scene of the crime, Uesugi-san. I took Eiri with me away from there and I ran away from it all. My body seemed to act on his own volition and I did some things I'm not sure were so wise anymore."

"What things?" she asked softly.

Tohma told her everything that he'd done. He told her about the prostitute, the cocaine, the taxi and the hotel.

"But if it was in self-defense, why did you feel the need to cover it up?" she asked. Tohma looked at his fiancé. His body had turned around and he was facing her now. Her hands rested on his lap, reassuringly.

"Because," Tohma's gaze hardened, "I don't want him to go through what happened to him ever again. I've lived in America long enough to know how the system works. I knew if they found out Eiri's feelings they might turn things around and say he'd killed Kitazawa because he was rejected." Mika's eyes went wide, as though she couldn't possibly conceive the idea of anyone not believing her brother.

"They would ask painful questions and try to break him, Uesugi-san. The system protects minors, but he's a foreigner and," Tohma hesitated a moment, "and possibly homosexual." Tohma seemed to choke on the last word, not being used to ever saying it, much less about someone he knew and loved. "They might be lenient but it would be painful for Eiri, nonetheless. He's had enough suffering already. I don't want him to face any more pain. I don't want him to re-live his experience over and over again just so that some prejudiced people in a jury can take pity on him and declare him a victim." Tohma was almost shaking. "I wanted to bring him here and help him forget everything, Uesugi-san." Tohma's eyes were almost pleading now.

Mika nodded, understanding. "I would like for that to happen, too," she said smiling sadly. "Do you think it's possible? Do you think he can forget?" She asked, almost desperately. Tohma didn't know the answer to that question, so he didn't lie. "I don't know, but I hope so. I'm severing my ties in America and I shall hope for this all to blow over and never haunt us in Japan." He took her hands in his and felt a tear fall on the back of his hand. It belonged to Mika.

"We can rebuild a new life for Eiri here, Uesugi-san. We can put this behind us." He wasn't simply trying to sound re-assuring. Tohma was trying to convince her and himself things would really be that way.

"I'm glad you care about my brother so much," she said, pulling one hand away from his to wipe her tears. "You are part of the family already." She looked up at him and smiled. For some strange reason, Tohma felt a new wave of sadness and fear grip his insides again when he heard those words. He cared about the woman sitting next to him, and for the first time he felt he was getting to know her, but he didn't know if he considered her family. He certainly didn't care for her the way he did for Eiri, but he knew that's not how it was supposed to be. He supposed all that would change from now on. One day Mika Uesugi would be his wife. The thought dawned on him as if for the first time ever. He didn't understand why but now, more than a moment ago, he felt himself like crying.

"I'm really grateful for all that you have done so far for us, but you shouldn't carry the weight of all of this on your own anymore. You have been too kind already. We are not a family yet, but soon we will be. In the meant time, Eiri is my little brother and he's my responsibility only, not yours." It was the truth, and the way things worked in Japan, especially between arranged marriages. But this was no common arranged marriage. And this was no common relationship between brothers in law. Tohma felt dismay. A pit seemed to open up under his feet again and once more he was falling through the dark void. This time, however, there was nobody to ground him.

"I'm eternally grateful to you, but this is not your burden to bear anymore. I shall take Eiri to Kyoto with me and we'll keep in touch. You can come visit us there and I'll keep you updated of his situation. Do you have someone with whom to stay in Tokyo? Are you going to be okay on your own here?"

Tohma didn't hear the rest of what Mika said. Her voice sounded far away. The room seemed to tilt around him. He was feeling dizzy again. A cool hand on his forehead made him realize just how hot he was.

"Tohma, can you hear me? Are you feeling okay?" Tohma looked at Mika. She still sounded far away, but he could see she was right in front of him. Her other hand was stilling him. He had stumbled to the side and almost knocked the tea over.

"I think you have a fever," she said. "You are burning up."

A flash of white blinding light came through the windows and bounced off every wall in the room. The air after the jolt of lightning felt electric with charge, making Tohma's skin fill up with goose bumps. "Kyoto…" Tohma's eyes drifted over his lap. There were little drops of water there, mottling his jeans. He licked his lips and tasted salt. He realized he didn't know when the tears had broken loose. Not even a split second passed before a deep roar of thunder scratched the sky with an agonizingly long rumble. The storm, it seemed, was right over head.

_To be continued_


	4. Under the Microscope

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravitation or the characters portrayed within it. They belong to the wonderful Maki Murakami and I'm only using her ideas and a bit of my own artistic license to write a story.

**Chapter Four**

**Under the Microscope **

_Eiri-kun? What's that in your hand? Is that a gun? Where did you get it from? _

_Is that— is it Mike's revolver? Oh, that STUPID son of a bitch! I'm going to kill him!_

_Eiri-kun, gimme the gun. You wouldn't shoot me, right? You can't, it's not like you. _

_See? You are shaking all over. Lower the gun, Eiri-kun. Take your finger off the trigger._

_Okay, okay, I won't come any closer. I'll just stand right over here, okay? See? I'm not moving. _

_So I am moving a little, but it's only a little. See? Tiny, little steps._

_You wouldn't hurt me, right? Lower that thing, Eiri. It is not a toy. Give it to me. _

"Aniki! Oi, Aniki!" Tatsuha's voice was a whisper in the dark. He scooted closer to his older brother's futon and shook him lightly the same way he'd done a moment ago. "Are you having a bad dream again?"

Eiri woke up with a start and his arms shot out to steady his bolting motion, hitting Tatsuha in the chest by accident.

"Ouch, that hurt! I was only trying to wake you up." Tatsuha pouted and rubbed his chest.

Eiri sat up on his futon. His breathing came hard, and his neck bobbed up and down when he swallowed. He was covered in sweat – his hair sticking clammily to his forehead and neck; his shirt stuck to his chest in places like a second skin. He looked around him in a light daze, as if trying to establish his surroundings.

"Were you having a bad dream? Do you want me to get in the futon with you? You used to let me get in your futon when I had bad dreams. I can return the favour now, if you want. I don't mind, it's not that hot."

The pillow gave way under the weight of Eiri's head when he lay down again. He turned around, with his back to his brother. "Don't be stupid, Tatsuha. I'm not nine years old like you, I'm a grown up. I don't need that sort of thing. Go back to your futon and sleep."

"I'm ten!"

"Whatever. Go to bed."

Tatsuha frowned and lingered around his brother's futon, looking forlorn.

"Come on! Before I tell Mikarin about school today, go!" Eiri hissed out. Tatsuha crawled in the dark towards his futon and got into it with some fuss. "You wouldn't tell her," he huffed, adjusting the covers around the lower part of his body only, one leg sticking out.

"Try me."

The air in the room was hot and humid. It had stopped raining late in the evening and the cicadas had come out in droves. Thousands of them of different species poised themselves upon the damp grass outside, performing a steady vibrato melody like they did every night during the summer months. Their shrill chirping filtered through the wooden walls of Eiri and Tatsuha's shared room in the house beside the temple, drilling into their ears.

"Aniki, are you awake?" Tatsuha stretched his hands towards the ceiling and looked at them with eyes adjusted to the dark. "I know you are awake, but you are being grumpy. You've been grumpy since you came back from America. Did something bad happen there?"

"Shut up and sleep, Tatsuha."

"What was your dream about?"

"I don't know, I don't remember."

"You are just saying that to keep me quiet."

"No, I'm not."

Tatsuha sighed and rolled over, looking towards the unmoving lump across from him. He bit his lower lip before he spoke. "Aniki… who's Yuki?"

Eiri's back twitched. "Where did you hear that name?" he asked apprehensively.

"You were calling that name in your dream."

"What else did I say?"

"Not much. You were asking 'why' over and over again, and telling that person not to move." Tatsuha shrugged.

"Did I say anything else?"

"Like what?"

"Like anything else, Tatsuha, anything at all."

Tatsuha seemed to think about it for a moment before he concluded, "No, that wass all."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure! At least I didn't hear anything else when I awoke." Tatsuha rested his elbow on the lining under him and leaned his head on the palm of his hand, sleep apparently not a priority for him at the moment.

"Anikiii—"

"Be quiet and go to sleep. You have school tomorrow."

"But—"

"Tatsuhaa…"

Tatsuha flopped down on the futon and threw the covers over his face in discontent. For a while he twisted and turned, his futon covers shuffling here and there. At last his fidgeting stopped and his breathing came out evenly. For Eiri, on the other hand, sleep didn't come.

A few hours later, the first vestiges of sunshine started seeping through the gaps in the wooden beams of the wall. Mika was already up and cooking. The smell of a hearty Japanese breakfast wafted around the temple house, inciting its inhabitants to break away from the persistent tendrils of sleep and rise from the depths of the world of dreams. Eiri got up silently and rolled up his futon. He then awoke Tatsuha, who sleepily opened his eyes, closed them again and begged to be left alone for another five minutes. Eiri threatened to pour a bucket of cold garden-pond water over his head, at which Tatsuha rolled off the futon and onto the floor, grumbling. Eiri got dressed and went to the kitchen to help his sister with breakfast.

"Sleep well?" Mika asked while switching on the stove where the i _miso /i _ soup would be heated.

Eiri shrugged. "I guess," he lied.

At that point the telephone rang. Mika frowned and looked at the clock on the wall. It read 6:52 am. "Who could it be this early?" She dried her hands with a cloth and walked to the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Uesugi-san. It's me, Seguchi-san. I'm sorry to call this early. I tried calling last night but I couldn't get through to anyone."

"Hello, Tohma," Mika said, glancing at Eiri when he turned to look at her. "Last night we were at a relative's house until pretty late."

"The reason I couldn't wait until later to call is because my flight leaves in half an hour and I won't be able to talk to you again until I touch down in New York."

"I see." Mika covered the phone with a hand and hushed out, "Eiri, could you go make sure Tatsuha puts his tie on properly? Dad should also be up by now. Go and get them both." Whilst she said this she motioned him out with her other hand. Eiri looked suspicious for a moment and hesitated briefly before turning around and leaving the kitchen.

"New York? Why are you going there?" Mika hurried to ask as soon as she was alone.

"My boss called me yesterday afternoon and he didn't sound happy. The truth is I suspected something like this might happen. I can't just walk out of my job like that, without giving any notice. I'm breaking my contract."

"Of course." Mika walked to the edge of the kitchen and peered around the door. The corridor was empty.

"Riley is willing to let me go because he's a friend of the man who recommended me for the job, Makamoto-san. As you might remember Makamoto-san is also an old friend of my father's and I wouldn't like for the news to spread back to my home. They have enough against me as it is. Riley has asked me to go in person to sign some papers and close things off properly and I've accepted. It's just a formality, so it shouldn't take long. I'll try to tie some loose ends over there and come back as soon as possible, hopefully by the weekend."

"Is it okay for you to go back?" Mika asked, her tone worried.

Tohma sighed. "I considered trying to disappear, but our common connections make it practically impossible to do it without raising suspicions. It'd be very easy for my boss to ask around and track me down. It's better this way."

"And what about," Mika hesitated, "what about Kitazawa-san?"

"I have been checking the papers and nothing seems to have come of it. I think it's quite fair to assume we are in the clear."

"Tohma?"

"What is it?"

"I don't know. Something seems weird. Didn't you just say Riley called you yesterday afternoon?"

"That's right."

"But I thought you were to talk to him on Monday. Wouldn't he have told you all of this then?"

"I did call him on Monday, but apparently he had some trouble getting back from Philadelphia and he wasn't in the office all morning. I guess Andrew gave him my message and my contact number sometime between my phone call and Monday evening, when he called me."

"Didn't you just say he'd called you yesterday at midday? It's Wednesday today, it doesn't add up."

"Sorry to confuse you, Uesugi-san. I meant Monday evening, New York time. There's a 14-hour difference."

"Right."

Eiri came walking down the corridor, Tatsuha in tow. Mika observed Tatsuha's tie wasn't tied properly after all.

"Okay, give us a call when you get there. Do you want to talk to Eiri?"

Eiri and Tatsuha walked past Mika then. Eiri looked surprised and rushed to wave his hand in a negative motion. His eyes widened meaningfully and he shook his head 'no'.

"Oh, sorry. I thought he was coming around the corner but it was only Tatsuha. Eiri must still be in the bath. Yes, okay. Bye, then."

Mika hung up the phone. "Why don't you want to talk to Tohma? You haven't spoken to him once since we came down to Kyoto. Everything okay between you two?"

Eiri stirred the i _miso_ /i soup and switched off the electric stove. "Yeah, everything's fine. I just don't want to talk to anybody right now."

"You are talking to me," Mika said smiling. She walked to the table and kissed Tatsuha's forehead. "Morning rascal," she greeted him, ruffling his hair after she'd finished fumbling with his tie. Tatsuha whined at Mika's affections and eloquently expressed his disgust towards any kind of emotional display, then demanded breakfast.

"Watch your mouth, young man," Mika warned Tatsuha, hitting him lightly in the head with a ladle. He blew a raspberry at her, but turned serious as soon as the Uesugi patriarch sauntered into the kitchen, trying to stifle a yawn. He greeted them while Mika and Eiri finished serving breakfast for the family.

"Good morning, son," he said to Eiri. His eyes were cold.

"Good morning, sir," Eiri said in return, not looking at the Uesugi patriarch directly.

The Uesugis moved into the other room with their zen-trays, sat down together and performed their first morning prayer.

* * *

The lobby of _Cellulose Media Inc._ was buzzing with activity at ten in the morning. The company building were Tohma used to work was an unrefined rectangular mixture of concrete, glass and steel, with its roots embedded deep underneath the Manhattan jungle, and rising twenty eight stories above street level. The shadow of the rotating doors Tohma left behind turned on the linoleum floor under his feet. 

He walked through the metal detector and towards the signing-in desk, where he didn't recognize the woman sitting there. Behind her head, on the wall, the large chrome logo of the company hung on the wall.

"Hello," he greeted her, pulling the registry sheet and signing himself into the building. "I work here," he said, showing her his company card. "At least until I come back down I do. Are you new?"

The young woman glanced up from the note she was writing and took his card for inspection. Without looking, she swiped it in the verification system and the light went green. "I'm only doing temp work for the girl who's on vacation," she explained briefly, turning the registry around to read his name and handing the card back to him.

"Ginny?" Tohma enquired.

"I guess so," she said non-committaly, reading his name. For a moment, she looked surprised. Her eyes darted from the paper back to him, and then behind her shoulder.

"It's a foreign surname. I'm Japanese," Tohma said smiling politely, adjusting the jacket he had draped over his arm. He was used to people's incredulity when he told them he was Japanese. The information would usually be followed by a strand of questions on the unusual colour of his hair, his eyes, and possibly a mention of his almost flawless accent.

"I know," she said, looking between the paper and him again.

Tohma frowned. "You do? That's uncommon," he said smiling. Before Tohma could think anything else of the woman's strange turn in attitude, however, a voice sounded behind her. Tohma lifted his face to look.

"Tohma, my man! You are here." A young, lanky man with dark hair covered in gel appeared from behind a door, walking with long strides towards him.

"Hello, Jack," Tohma greeted him, extending his hand out to shake Jack's firmly. The woman went back to her note, but not without first wheeling her chair away from them slightly, towards a corner of the desk.

"I wasn't expecting you until midday at least." Jack looked at his wristwatch.

"You were expecting me?" Tohma asked confused.

Jack let out a quiet laugh and Tohma thought it sounded nervous. Jack smoothed his tie down, smiling. "Well, not me personally. The big guys upstairs." Jack's long finger pointed at the ceiling, and then he lowered his arm and his hand came to rest on his hip. He looked at the small suitcase in Tohma's left hand and then back to his face. "Come straight from the airport?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact I did," Tohma said unsurely, following Jack's gaze when the other glanced at the phone. "I wasn't aware my whereabouts where being discussed all over the building."

"Oh, it's nothing like that! I just heard you had to leave but that you were coming back today." This time Tohma was sure Jack's laughter was nervous. "Anyway," Jack reached out to pick up the phone, even though it hadn't rung. "Duty calls," he said smiling. "I guess I'll see you on your way back out. Take care."

Tohma's eyes narrowed, "Sure". He glanced at the girl and noticed that her pen was hovering over the paper, but she hadn't written anything down in the last few minutes. Jack was dialling an internal number. A sixth sense kicked in, telling Tohma something was wrong. For a moment, he was tempted to turn on his heels and walk back out of the building and into a vehicle that would take him back to the airport. Then, shaking his head to himself, he pushed his paranoia aside and made his way to the lift. The air-conditioning had never being very effective and Tohma took a moment to wipe his forehead down with his sleeve. Inside the elevator Tohma could see Jack waving at him from the desk.

When he reached the twenty-fifth floor and came out of the elevator all eyes turned to him. People's voices hushed and not a piece of paper could be heard shuffling. Tohma willed himself to move and his mouth to speak normally. If the rumours of his sudden departure had been circulating around the office he was expecting the usual reproaching stares and back-stabbing attitude to emerge. Tohma knew this was the time one found out who, if anybody, were one's true friends.

"Hello, everybody," he greeted them. All eyes evaded his, and people pretended to go back to what they had been doing before he'd appeared.

"Tohma," Nicky's familiar voice startled him. Tohma turned his face and she came into his field of view, looking her usual corporative self. He didn't like the woman much. She was the kind who would do anything to get to the top, including sharing more than her professional opinions with Riley on the weekends or whenever Riley's wife was away.

"Hello, how are you?" She came to a stop in front of him. Her smile was that which she might have given a perfect stranger on the street: cold, distant and weary.

"Doing the best I can. And yourself?"

"Running around like a headless chicken, as usual. We weren't expecting you yet. Riley is busy at the moment, come with me." She turned around and Tohma knew immediately that she was walking in the direction of the conference room. People's gazes lifted from their desks and photocopying machines followed them as they walked. Instead of looking at them or the floor Tohma kept his head held high and looked in the direction of Andrew's office, but the door was closed and the lights were off. For that matter, his own office was closed, and the blinds drawn. The golden plaque on the wall outside still bore his name.

They went inside an ample room with a large oval table in the middle, surrounded by leather swivel chairs. Apart from the table, the chairs and a wheeled cart with some high-tech equipment at the far end, the room was empty. Tohma noticed the carpet and table were perfectly clean, indicating the room hadn't been used that day. His eyes moved towards the left hand side corner of the ceiling, where the small, red light of a surveillance camera glowed.

"It feels like centuries have passed since I was here last time," Tohma said, putting his jacket on the back of a chair, his suitcase on the floor, and sitting himself down. "It was only last week, though."

"Can I get you anything? Would you like a coffee?" Nicky asked, hovering by the door.

"Coffee would be great, thank you," Tohma replied.

"I'll tell Lucy to prepare it. Just wait here a moment. Riley shouldn't be long." With that, Nicky turned around and left. Tohma rubbed his eyes and adjusted his shirt, wondering if he looked as tired as he felt. His plane had touched down on JFK airport at 07:42 am, New York time. On the way to Japan, Eiri and he had lost over a day due to the time difference. Now, however, it was as though he'd teleported himself from Japan to America in an instant, taking only ten minutes to do the whole trip. It was enough to disorient even an astronaut, he thought, looking forward to that coffee.

As if on cue, the door opened and a timid looking Lucy walked in, carrying a cup of black coffee. "Hi," she said simply, setting the saucer down on the table in front of him. Her hand jittered slightly and a little coffee spilled out of the cup and into the saucer, also wetting the packets of sugar.

"Sorry!" she rushed to apologize, but before he could tell her it was nothing, Riley came into the room.

"Lucy, please bring me a cup of coffee as well, will you?" He strode into the room, his step confident and strong. "Hello, Tohma." He stretched his hand out and they shook hands firmly. Lucy made herself scarce, seeming only too glad to leave. Riley sat himself down and looked at his wristwatch. "I didn't think you'll come here straight away. I had understood you'd stop at your house first, so the papers aren't ready yet." He was skipping the pleasantries and going straight to the point, something Tohma found strange. Even though they'd already discussed most of the reasons for his leaving over the phone, a personal re-cap was always the right decorum, especially considering the supposed nature of his departure. Tohma had made up some story about Eiri falling with ill health and having to take him back to Japan and look after him.

"Yes, sorry about that. I changed my mind and came here straight away instead."

Riley nodded. "As you are probably aware, breaking your contract with us is not something we can take lightly. I've already told you despite that, as a favour to your family, I'm prepared to let it slide this time. However, to oversee the procedure by which we declare you exempt of the legal obligations to which you are bound to the company, we need the presence of an attorney. I've called him already and he's on his way. His office is nearby so he shouldn't be long."

Tohma had thought as much, and he said so. "I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused you. It was never my intention."

"Apology accepted," Riley's words were sympathetic but his body language and attitude told a different tale. Tohma felt as though his soon to be ex-boss was trying to discern if there was something else beside the story Tohma had invented. He felt uncomfortable under his scrutiny but he tried not to let it show, making polite conversation about the meeting Tohma should have headed yesterday instead. Something was bugging Tohma, making the palms of his hand sweat and his concentration waver, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was exactly. In the end he attributed his high-strung state to jetlag.

"Where's Andrew? His office door was closed." Tohma drank some of his coffee. He didn't put any sugar on it because the packets had been spoiled and so it tasted bitter.

"I gave him a few days off," Riley answered. Tohma frowned and again felt that something important was evading his mental grasp, slipping between his fingers like an eel. Surely now that he wasn't going to be working anymore, Riley couldn't afford handing out holidays to the key members of the company. Tohma grew wearier and wondered if severing his ties with the company was going to be as easy as he'd hoped, or if there was something he couldn't see lurking beneath the amiable façade.

Lucy came back into the room, this time accompanied by a tall man. The man had receding grey hair and was wearing thick-rimmed glasses, a dark suit and tie, and carrying a briefcase, not too dissimilar to Tohma's own. He greeted Riley and introduced himself to Tohma as Mark Lancaster. Lucy was told to go and fetch a third cup of coffee for the newcomer and the three men were left alone in the conference room.

Riley looked at his wristwatch again. Tohma noticed people had been doing that ever since he had walked in the building, almost an hour ago. "Tohma," Riley said, "I'm sorry it has come to this, but I felt I had no other choice. You must understand, this kind of thing… it doesn't look good for the company." Riley gave a deep, resigned sigh, looking into Tohma's eyes. "We are under the constant inspection of rival companies, always under a microscope. You hold a high post within this company and a scandal like this would deal us a severe blow. Just imagine the headlines in the i Financial Times /i . No, I cannot allow that to happen. I want you to know that this is not a decision I took lightly. Tohma, I want you to believe me when I say that I have your, and especially your family's, best interests in my mind at all times. I've been racking my brains since Monday, but in the end I could see no other solution. I'm truly sorry."

Tohma felt his heart pulse accelerate, but said nothing, for Riley was already talking again. "Before you think badly of me, or Andrew, put yourself in our shoes for a moment. I'm sure that eventually you'll come to see I was left with no other choice. I want you and your family to know that I didn't want things to be this way."

At that moment the door to the conference room opened. Somewhere in the back of his mind Tohma already knew it wouldn't be Lucy shuffling past him and setting down another cup of coffee. When he turned to look, he saw two men walking into the room. The people outside, behind the two men, made no effort to mask their curious stares. Tohma knew who the men were straight away, and he felt his head spin, his heart pump against his throat and his breath speed up but he didn't let any of it show on his expression. Instead he looked at the men with mild interest.

"My name is Paul Yancey and this man here with me is agent Robert Whitter. We are with the NYPD. Mr. Tohma Seguchi, is that correct?" The door closed behind them again and the elder of the two men walked up to Tohma, towering over him, his police badge in hand. He shoved it so close to Tohma's face that the engraved numbers on it turned blurry.

Tohma's mouth went dry, and he wanted to swallow to clear it but he didn't. He was about to speak when the man sitting to his left got up and, offering his hand to the man who'd introduced himself as Paul Yancey, said, "Mark Lancaster, I'm Mr. Seguchi's lawyer. How do you do?" The officer looked taken aback, but not as much as Tohma did. With a sour face the officer shook the lawyer's hand and turned his neck to give Riley a look that could only be interpreted as reproachful. Riley held his stare.

"I wasn't aware this man needed a lawyer. I only said I had some questions for him – hardly a situation that calls for a lawyer unless you have reasons to worry. Do you have reasons to worry, Mr Seguchi?" The man was curt and straight to the point.

"No more reasons to worry than anyone who has been lied to about the reason his immediate presence is required, and who is forced to take time out from an important family matter."

Mark Lancaster stopped Tohma from saying anything more by putting out a raised hand. "If my information is correct, I understand you have some questions regarding the death of a man named Yuki Kitazawa. With all due respect, officer, if you don't have an arrest warrant, I suggest you go back the way you came. My client won't talk to you until he has spoken with me."

The officer arched his eyebrows and looked at Tohma. Tohma felt he had no say in the matter and so he nodded. Realization had given way to fear, then to anxiety, then to incredulity and finally, when the man who he had thought a social attorney had spoken as his lawyer, shock. Now he was just numb. He could hardly keep up with the events unfolding before his eyes. All of this turmoil was cleverly locked on the inside only, however; on the outside he was the perfect picture of composure. He felt a cold sweat break over his forehead and hoped the others didn't notice it. To help him with this he regarded the officers with a contemptuous stare, as though they were being a nuisance.

Despite the lawyer's words, Officer Yancey showed no intentions of leaving. He looked at his companion and a silent agreement seemed to pass between them. Tohma was almost expecting to hear the words he'd heard on TV so many times before – _you have the right to remain silent…_ The words of the Miranda warning never came, though. Instead, a tense silence settled over the five people in the room, as if each was assessing the others and preparing his next move. Tohma didn't know what his was going to be.

"Okay, let's have it your way, but not here." The officer turned and faced Tohma, "Mr. Seguchi, if you would be so kind as to accompany us to the police station, we'd like to ask you some questions. Your lawyer may be present and advise you, but exercising the right to remain silent may also be used against you should you find yourself under arrest and consequently charged. Is that clear?" Tohma nodded and got up. Mark Lancaster followed and Riley opened the door for them, shooting Tohma a sorrowful look. Tohma rewarded him with a pat on the shoulder, which he hoped came across as a message to Riley and the officers that he had no reason to worry. He was playing the part of innocent as convincingly as he'd seen the actors on Broadway's stages do so many times before.

The walk out of the building was almost a mirror image of the way in except the two officers escorted Tohma walking in front of him and his lawyer trailed beside him. He was so immersed in his role he even indulged in waving Jack goodbye at the desk. Once outside, his lawyer leaned in close and whispered in his ear, "Don't worry Mr. Seguchi. They are taking us to the police station because they must think you involved somehow. Whether you are a suspect or not I can't tell at this point but since they haven't handcuffed you or issued you the Miranda warning I'd say they don't have much on you. Trust me, I know these things. From now on I would like you to speak only if I instruct you to do so, can you do that for me?"

Tohma nodded and his lawyer answered him with a lop-sided smile. He didn't look worried in the least, and that gave Tohma more confidence. It seemed to Tohma his lawyer suspected he was most definitely 'involved in it somehow'. In spite of that, the man would willingly defend his honour in exchange for heart-stopping fees. "It won't sit well with them, and it will most certainly irritate them, although it's perfectly legal." At this little piece of information, Mark Lancaster winked at him and Tohma smiled in return.

They rode in the back of the police car together, saying nothing more to each other Once in the police station they were taken into an austere room with security cameras, a desk and a few chairs. There were no mirrors on the wall, like Tohma had expected, and he figured they might be given some privacy now. Instead, someone brought a tape recorder into the room and the two officers who had come to question him at the building stayed with them.

"Please take a seat and make yourselves comfortable." Tohma thought he could detect a hint of sarcasm in the officer's voice. There was no way in the world what was about to take place next could be made in any way comfortable. Yancey remained standing up, and he walked over to stand next to the table, at a point where Tohma and his lawyer could see him and feel his taller presence, no doubt. The other officer stayed by the door, his arms tight and straight in front of him, his hands interlocked at the end.

"Is your full name Tohma Seguchi?" Officer Yancey asked.

Tohma looked at his lawyer, who nodded for him to answer the question.

"Speak aloud, please," Yancey said, tapping the tape recorder. Tohma did so, loud and clear. His soft, somewhat feminine, voice seemed to surprise the officer, but he continued the line of questions immediately, as if it hadn't. "And you are of Japanese nationality?"

Tohma answered that question and the few standard ones that followed it – age, career, time he had lived in the states, etc.

"Did you know Yuki Kitazawa?"

Tohma was taken by surprise by the sudden change in the line of questioning. He was thinking about how to answer when his lawyer came to the rescue. "Don't answer that question." And so he didn't.

"Already going down that route?" It was a rhetorical question. Officer Yancey gave an exasperated sigh and looked at a clock on the wall. It was just past midday. He paced up and down the room for a couple of minutes then came back to his spot of preference on the table. "Very well, I'll do the talking for a while. I'll tell you what I know so that you both understand what you are up against and think twice about wasting my time."

Mark Lancaster opened his briefcase and took out a block of notes and a pen. Tohma felt he was in competent hands, so he tried to relax.

Officer Yancey past midday.esquestion. "rtable.ll, like Tohma had expected and he figured they'

took a moment to think, drumming his fingers on the table and scrunching his mouth. He took out a small paper pad from the front pocket in his jacket and opened it. He passed a few pages and settled on one, giving it a quick once over. Finally he spoke, his tone loud and matter-of-fact,rummedaight him and his hands interlocked at the end "At 2300 hours last Friday the 22nd of June, the body of freelance Japanese tutor, Yuki Kitazawa, was found at his residence in my jurisdiction in the borough of Queens. Cause of death: a firearm wound to the chest that pierced through his heart. The murder weapon was absent from the scene."

Tohma was sure the reason the officer was telling them all this now was not so they were informed, but rather to study his reactions whilst Tohma was still under the influence of the surprise factor which, thanks to the ride in the police car and his lawyer's reassuring words, was almost as good as gone. Tohma tried not to show any emotion at the mention of Kitazawa's name, or the word 'murder', but inside his stomach was churning with nerves. In his mind's eye he could see Kitazawa's body lying down, bleeding beyond death.

"At the scene of the crime several other things were found – among them, several sets of fingerprints, blood traces that didn't belong to the victim, and certain illegal substances."

Tohma thought the reason his lawyer hadn't requested a private meeting before the officer's monologue was probably so that he, himself, knew exactly what kind of case he had in his hands. Tohma could give his version of events later.

"Now, I don't like it when people think of the police as idiots who can be fooled easily. We are not stupid. So, when my instincts started telling me there was something not quite right about the way this man had died, I started taking it personally. You see, Mr. Seguchi," with those word Tohma realized the officer was making sure that he understood that whatever had prompted him to think that way, Tohma was involved in it somehow, "Mr, Seguchi, it looked to me that the scene of the crime had been tampered with." The officer made a pause, scanning Tohma with the precision of a robotic eye. "After all, it's not often the case for a man to store cocaine at his house when he takes to smoking the much less strong substance known as cannabis, of which we found traces in the victim's blood."

Tohma couldn't help the little twitch in his left eye. He hadn't figured Kitazawa as the type to smoke pot. They were already talking about the cocaine he'd planted and implied the fact they knew it had been planted. What they couldn't possibly know for sure was that he'd planted it, could they?

The corner of Yancey's mouth curved upwards a little as if to say i _strike one_ /i . Officer Yancey leaned forward on the wooden table, his pad resting in one hand over its scratched surface. He looked at Mark Lancaster, who was writing down all of what was being recited. The officer's confidence was obviously building up, his lawyer's never wavered, and so Tohma concluded both sides were breaking even in the initial showdown.

"The night Mr. Kitazawa's apartment was searched we found a list of contacts in his mobile phone and a telephone diary. Among them was your name, Mr Seguchi. Initially, this was just an added lead towards constructing a profile of the victim, except that over the weekend, at our request, the phone company produced a list of the last phone calls placed from Mr Kitazawa's apartment the evening of his death. Do you know where I'm going with this, Mr. Seguchi?"

Tohma kept his eyes expressionless, but he remembered Eiri's phone call to their apartment that evening as clearly as if he were hearing it right now. "Don't say anything," Mark Lancaster warned him, never stopping his pen.

"Also, according to the phone company, you have an apartment at 42nd River Place. Nice area, for the rich and privileged. What does this man have to do with an average American citizen living in Queens? That is what I was wondering when I went to your place on Monday morning."

Tohma didn't let his mask slip from his face, but he couldn't help the way his blood turned icy in his veins, making his face all the whiter. He didn't know Yuki Kitazawa had American citizenship. That certainly complicated matters greatly.

The officer went on with his litany, building intrigue upon intrigue that left no room for why his suspicions towards Tohma were so strong. After all, Tohma thought, that's all they were: suspicions, not hard evidence. He understood what his lawyer had wanted to tell him - if the police had the necessary evidence in a case of felony, Tohma would have been arrested without the need for a court order, and this wouldn't have happened. They had no evidence to prove he was anything more than an acquaintance of the victim. An acquaintance with a connection to the victim on the day of his murder, but an acquaintance nonetheless, Tohma re-assured himself.

Right now, Officer Yancey was talking about Monday morning again. "Nice neighbour, that Smith woman. Told me all about how she hadn't seen you at all for the past few days and where you worked. So, I went to _Cellulose Media_ and I started to get an idea of who you are and what you do. Again more questions came to my head. Your boss, Mr. Jonathan Riley, was very helpful upon our visit on Monday morning. I'm sure he didn't like it when we caused a stir in front of the workers, but it's usually the best way to get people to co-operate a little bit quicker." At those words, the officer made a pause to allow his comment to fully sink in. Obviously, Yancey was trying to incite animosity between him and his boss, and to lead Tohma to think he had no allies and no one to trust.

Tohma remembered how he had been told Riley wasn't at the office on Monday and now he saw that had been a lie. The full implications of how he had been set up started to materialize clearly in his mind. People's reactions to his appearance today also made sense now – the apprehension of the unknown woman at the desk in the lobby, cheerful Jack's nervous laughter, people's eyes in the office, Nicky's cold smile and distant demeanour, Lucy's jittery hands when serving him coffee – they all came back to his memory in quick succession, and he felt he had trapped the eel between his fingers at last. It was useless now. There was no doubt in Tohma's mind everybody had been instructed to expect him to turn up that day, and to keep him in the building and deliver him to Riley so he could be handed over to the police. Everybody thought him a murderer! The idea made Tohma's heart sink lower than he thought it could sink after what he had been through in the last week.

"With a little, shall we say, 'reminder' of how withholding information from the police on a murder investigation turns you into a possible accomplice, and with a little comment from Mr. Riley on how not co-operating with the police puts one's job on jeopardy, your colleague," Yancey paused and looked at his pad, "Andrew Leighton, told us you had fled the country before the weekend."

Tohma was sure 'fled' was not the word Andrew had used, but it was indeed the way the officer had interpreted it. Now he could see why he hadn't been able to talk with Andrew since Monday morning and why Riley had apologized to him before the officers had made their appearance. Could it somehow be, that despite it all, he was still trusted and supported by the one person who had brought him back into the country? Riley's heartfelt apology in the conference room and the fact Tohma had a lawyer sitting by his side made him think perhaps he was. It was ironic, then, that aside from being scared of what might happen now, he was also sad because Riley trusted a man who was almost as guilty as charged.

Officer Yancey had been looking at him for the past few seconds. He looked like a cobra standing far away with its fangs bared, judging just the right timing to strike the lethal blow. "I thought you should know we are expecting to get a report of your credit card activities to come in any minute. We'll also receive more clues from the forensic unit today, but that won't be for a while. Right now, we'll give you sometime to talk to your lawyer, and afterwards we'll need to take your fingerprints and a blood sample for cross-reference with the DNA found at the scene." The officer looked at Tohma's hand and said, almost leering, "Those scratches on your hand don't look particularly healed. Look after them." He straightened up and watched amused as Tohma automatically lowered his hand to his lap, covering the back of it with his left hand, and immediately regretting his action.

The scratches didn't hurt, just like they hadn't hurt when he had broken through the glass panel of Kitazawa's building, his veins overflowing with adrenaline. Mark Lancaster capped his fountain pen and passed the pages in his notebook until he found a blank one. If he noticed the mention of scratches or what had followed afterwards, he didn't let it show.

"Also, if you don't voluntarily let us search your property we'll issue a search warrant to allow us to do so." The officer waited, as if waiting for Tohma to give him the go-ahead now rather than later.

"If that is all, officer, I would like to have some time to talk to my client now." Mark Lancaster got up, inviting the policemen to leave and thereby getting Tohma out of having to volunteer for his apartment to be searched.

"That is all for the moment. We'll wait outside and make a few phone calls. If I hear the right news it is quite possible Mr. Seguchi will be placed under arrest after all, and made to spend the night in a cell. Obviously, even if that weren't to happen, the idea of him leaving town, much less the country, until further notice is completely out of the question." Officer Yancey straightened up and turned to leave, the other officer in tow. "One more thing," he said turning to look over his shoulder. "You see, Mr. Seguchi, the thing that's been bugging me the most all this time is what does someone like you have to do with someone like Mr. Kitazawa. What I need most of all to solve this case is a motive. I'm sure your English skills are nothing short of excellent to work for your company. I somehow doubt your interest in Literature… and so the question that my mind keeps coming up with is this: _what links these two unlikely people?_"

Tohma was afraid of the man's stare when he asked him the question. His cold, blue eyes seemed to see right through him and stare straight into his soul, into his heart. For a moment he felt petrified. His brain immediately screamed a single word so loudly he was sure everyone in the room must be able to hear it. The word was none other than the answer to the officer's question, the reason he'd fight this unexpected turn of events no matter what, and the person he loved most of all in the world: Eiri!

_Thanks for reading, to be continued_


End file.
